{"id":317271,"date":"2021-09-14T12:23:03","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T12:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/?page_id=317271"},"modified":"2024-02-08T16:52:08","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T16:52:08","slug":"alice-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocomplynetwork.com\/alice-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alice Smith Shot by<\/strong> @whistonphoto<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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Alice Smith is a skater living in Birmingham sponsored by Nike SB who runs Brum Girl Skate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She’s got a creative trick selection, stylish No Complys and does original tricks on ramp and street. Her skating is interesting to watch and so we wanted to find out how she got a board, developed her style, got sponsored and discover what she’s working on right now.\u00a0<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

Read her interview to find out how she started skating in Birmingham, building a bigger skate community at Bournbrook DIY, Nike SB, thoughts on creativity and skating, Brum Girls Skate, street and transition, learning new tricks and filming clips, her <\/strong>inspirations and influences and favourite skaters, styles and spots, videos, photos, artists and musicians of all-time and more.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Alice<\/a>: @whistonphoto<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Alice Elizabeth Smith<\/p>\n

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Where did you grow up ?<\/h1>\n

I grew up in Kidderminster, a town just on the outside of the Black Country. Now, I live in Birmingham, and have done for just over three years.<\/p>\n

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So when did you first see skateboarding and think I want to do that?<\/h1>\n

Probably when I was about 12 or 13, I stumbled across ‘Quaked’, a skate video which was set in Christchurch, just after the earthquake.<\/p>\n

It featured the skaters making the most out of a\u00a0natural disaster, using the destroyed environment to their advantage by gapping over huge\u00a0cracks in the floor.<\/p>\n

After that, I remember seeing a few skaters about in town, always in big groups and laughing.<\/p>\n

I began to build up my own association with what skateboarding represented, characterised by big groups of friends and community.<\/p>\n

Having struggled with\u00a0my own family life, naturally, this was what the main appeal was, and was what initially\u00a0spurred me to think \u201cI want to do that\u201d.<\/p>\n

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How did you get your first board?<\/h1>\n

I got my first skateboard when I was about 13, it was a Sports Direct Airwalk board, and for about a year I just messed about on it, sat down on it riding down hills, you know that kind of thing.<\/p>\n

My first \u2018proper\u2019 board was a Bandit, which I got from the old skate shop, Rednex,\u00a0in Bewdley.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Quickly after that I started properly getting into skating, having access to a proper board really helped me progress outside of just riding down hills haha.<\/p>\n

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

I think I properly started getting into skating when I was about 14, and my crew back then was other Kidderminster skateboarders – shout out to Legs – Sam Morgan, for being one of the first skaters I met and teaching me a big chunk of what I know today.We used to have a huge group, at summer we\u2019d sit at Brintons parks around the bowl and chill there for easily the whole day, 10am until it got dark.<\/p>\n

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Which skaters influence you to skate the way you do?<\/h1>\n

During my first few years of skating, my style and approach to skating was quite\u00a0conventional, I climbed up that basic ladder of tricks which people tend to follow: Ollie, Shuv,\u00a0180, Kickflip, tricks like that.<\/p>\n

One of the first videos I watched that really influenced me wanted to go\u00a0against the grain was the BATB2 game featuring Mike Vallely and Chris Cole.<\/p>\n

It provided my\u00a0younger self with two different elements of what skateboarding could be for a person, and\u00a0although I can\u2019t do all those mad tricks that Mike V does in the game, his approach represented for me a kind of rebellion against the normative way of riding a board.<\/p>\n

\u2018Cheese and Crackers\u2019 was also very influential, although I only started skating transition more confidently recently, the quirky and creative yet still insanely gnarly nature of Chris Haslam and Daewon Song\u2019s skating showed me how skating didn\u2019t have to be about the most textbook Tre down a twelve stair, and, as with BATB, represented a rebellion against the normative way of riding a board.<\/p>\n

These videos spurred me to be more creative with tricks, and I came to learn that non-standard tricks provided me with much more enjoyment and incentive to persist than learning Tre’s or three shuvs.<\/p>\n

Again, big up Legs, as I\u2019m pretty sure it\u00a0was him who showed me those videos, introducing me to a whole world of skateboarding\u00a0outside of Kidderminster\u2019s Dunelm carpark.<\/p>\n

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