Mike Manzoori has been making skate films for 25 years now. His first was an indie from London titled Sound & Vision. It features many UK pioneers including: Tom Penny, Simon Evans, Danny Wainwright, Carl Shipman, Alex Moul, Andy Scott, and more. There’s also cameos from visiting pros of the era such as Mike Frazier, Jeremy Wray, Pat Duffy, Mike Crum, and Danny Way to name a few. And the vintage footage of Radlands and Southbank contained in this classic edit are absolutely priceless. In honor of this first-ever online release, Slam City also published an interview with Manzoori in which he gives some interesting insight into these early days of the London scene.
Was Southbank sketchy at that point in time?
Oh yeah, it was still pretty sketchy as South London still hadn’t been gentrified in the mid 90’s. It was a regular thing to have big groups of rude boys coming in and robbing the skaters. Then you had the bit that led from the 7-stair through the dark bit around to where the curbs were out the back, that section was full of homeless people back then. Some of the dudes were cool, some weren’t but there was generally always people there skating so you kind of imagined that someone had your back if things went bad, but generally, you were on your own: I was always disappointed by that to be honest. But then saying that, I never had any trouble at Southbank really, despite going there thousands of times and yet I got robbed by an actual child in Birmingham, (laughing).
Watch Sound & Vision above, and head over to the Slam City site to read the full interview with Manzoori.