Hasan Media – Issue 39 Interview

Introduction & Interview by: Jono Coote

Photography by: Reece Leung

Hasan Media’s personality is not, perhaps, what you would expect if you only had only witnessed him skate rather than spoken to him. He bagged the last part in Henry Kavanagh’s scene video ‘I Feel Like Tigers Don’t Like Bites’ by dint of his willingness to hurl himself at or down any spot in his path like a rabid marionette and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him not going full throttle, charging spots as if his mind were plagued by a royal rumble of thrash metal bands having a punch up. But, in person, he loves Kate Bush and is mellower than a bong fashioned from an old iPath shoe. In fact, when asked to share thanks, props or disses at the end of this interview, he spent a few minutes in anguished prevarication as to whether he should throw his mate under the bus for mobbed kickflips before Max Weir convinced him to tell a story basically dissing his own inability to hold his drink – politeness personified, at least if you’re not the pub owner whose beer garden he’s blowing chunks in. With Reece collecting a solid spread of photos of him over recent months, I had headed over to Sheffield to sit in said beer garden with Hasan, Henry and Max and discuss influences, hillbombs, Dev Green lurkers and crisp rankings (Takis, Wotsits and Quavers, in that order in case you were wondering).

Where and when did skateboarding come into the picture for you? Reece said he first clocked you at the NSD Gauntlet jam in 2021, chucking tricks down the gap that you’d just learned from Shaun. Sheffield has such a range of skaters style-wise, that must have all shaped your skating.

I started skating in late 2019 at Millhouses Skatepark. I did my first trick, it’s on my Instagram to this day, when I was 15 or maybe just about 16. Then probably a year later I started going to Dev Green and that’s how I met everyone else. It was all going on at Dev. I was just a wacky kid messing about there, Shaun (Currie) met me and kind of introduced me to other people. Everyone inspired me, and was also just really nice to me. If I was going skating, I’d message the group chat or hit someone up and whoever was there, as I was in the stage of learning tricks, they’d already have a bag of tricks. I just copied everyone else really (laughs). I do a lot of noseslides, that’s probably from Shaun. Moggins bullied me into a lot of stuff, making me not be scared; “You have to do this now.”

The first time I met you you were ollieing off a drop over a stream of piss left by a passing drinker, everyone looked very proud.

(Laughs) I’ve never been tech. I’m slowly getting there now, learning to skate ledges. Just the other day me and Gary (McNaughton) went to Millhouses and were skating the ledge, when you watch him get into a session it’s sick. He’s one of those skaters, he doesn’t even need to do anything super crazy; just a front tail to fakie on a ledge, he’ll make it look amazing. I’d also like to mention my friend Jake Snowdon, he’s maybe inspired me the most because he’s truly himself on a skateboard. It makes his style so, so good. He really makes skating fun, he’s doing tricks nobody else really does, like big spin tailgrabs over Dev hip. I definitely have a lot of love for Jake. This year I’ve been skating with Ronny (Calow) a lot too, we’ve been having so much fun. 

Max: Massive shout out to Ronny. Tell him the time you got caught getting the train back after cycling to Manchester.

Oh man, I’d cycled over to skate and was trying to get back with Ben (Lilley’s) railcard. The train guard called me on it and I said I didn’t know what was going on, and a woman with a pushchair was like, “Go on, let him go.” He was over it, like, “I just want to finish and go for a pint,” and let me off. Then I clocked that the woman was wearing a Legacy tee and realised it was Ronny’s daughter. I’ve been skating with him this year more than probably anyone else. I’ll just turn up at Dev, I’ll get some coffee from the Dev shop, £1.50 from the coffee machine and Ronny will go get the croissants. For five minutes a day he’ll be practising switch heels. He’s started landing them now. He kills it, it gives me hope for the future.

Yeah, he’s what, in his mid 40s? How old are you now? 2019 doesn’t even seem long ago to me, but I guess to you… what were you doing before skating?

19, he’s more than double my age. He could be my grandad! He is my grandad, deep down. Mate, it feels like a lifetime! So much has changed. I was a scooter kid, that’s why I was at the skatepark. All my friends skated, I just wanted to be able to kickflip and that was it. My friend Jamie showed me what to do and I managed to learn it after hours of trying, the classic holding on to the fence and kicking your board technique. I finally did it, and about a week later all my friends built up a board for me out of their old parts. It’s weird, I was a proper scooter kid and then it just changed. 

A kid at Horsforth Skatepark told me a few weeks ago that he wanted to start skating because skateboards are way better for sitting on than scooters.

Skating is way better in every way. Just being able to push to the shop and ollie up the curb with your hands free, it’s so good. I’ve got my own way of sitting on a skateboard as well, I’ll demonstrate – you get it under your knee, then you kneel, and lean back. It looks like it wouldn’t work, but it’s the best way of sitting on a board. Honestly, try it.

Innovative skateboard sitting. That should be in the Olympics. So you’re hanging out at Dev, when did you discover Slugger? Because you’re skating for them now, right?

I don’t know, everyone just knew each other. The scene is fairly small and everyone would just be at Dev. I just skated with everyone, I’d go into Slugger and ask if I could get something and pay them back later. I started to learn about its history, like the connection with Baker Boys. Rasheed (Osman) was saying how crazy it is that all the Baker boards in the UK are distributed from the Slugger warehouse, all down to Louis (Slater) and Martin (Kennelly). Martin’s another one who dads me a bit. Before we went to Spit & Sawdust I turned up to the warehouse with nothing, he gave me a sleeping mat and we went to get a coffee. He was talking to this lady with a kid and she asked if he had any, he was like, “Yeah, I’ve got a four year old” – or however old his kid is – and then pointed at me and said, “and a 19 year old.” (Laughs) Everyone definitely looked after me for a bit.

Sheffield has always had a strong DIY scene, and you would have experienced Staples DIY for its entire life cycle. You’ve also got The House Skatepark’s concrete DIY bowl.You asked me before how I felt about it, how do you get on with it?

Staples was amazing, it was just so fun to skate. I’d never really helped with anything like that before and then there was my chance. The curb was just amazing, just doing slappy crooks was so fun. It was great because it was so open, you just had the choice of whatever obstacle you wanted to skate. I’d never really skated ledges before that. It definitely changed the way I skated. RIP Staples. Thanks John for building that. I’m scared of The House bowl. If there’s a session going down I’ll pop my head in and maybe do a slash, but I’m not the guy for skating transition really. That’s more Ben Lilley, if we go there he’ll shred it and I’ll just chill. But The House is rad for sure. In the winter you just learn so much. You see it with all the kids; particularly with little Jayden, now he kills it. You’ll go to The House and he’s zooming around, doing tricks you weren’t seeing him do the week before. It’s a skatepark for the skaters, init. You need skaters to be a part of it, that’s what makes it good. 

You shot a photo which got used for a House advert a little while back. When did you get involved in photography?

Oh yeah, I shot a photo of my friend Leo (Franchini) doing a front rock in the bowl. It was actually by accident, the plan was for him to do a front smith round the corner. I had no idea what I was doing, I set up a flash at one side of the bowl and the front rock was to test it out. Then we shot the smith, and it just didn’t come out as good. I started doing photography in college, I’d finished school and had no idea what I was doing. I chose that and absolutely loved it. Not even just skate photography, all aspects of it. If we were set an assignment I’d try and actually do my best, which I never did in school. Now I’m going to do it at Salford Uni. I think my mum got me into it, in a way. She didn’t take photos, she’d just see these things. “Look at that, it looks amazing with this there and that there.” She had the eye for it, she just didn’t know she did. I think I kind of got an idea of it from that. After studying photography, what she was saying made sense.

Let’s talk about ‘I Feel Like Tigers Don’t Like Bites’. How did you approach filming for the video, and were you aware beforehand that you were going to have the closing part?

I started filming with Henry way before I should have done, I wasn’t very good. We filmed for maybe two and a half years, then I think all the clips Henry used were from the last six months. But it was great, I like filming with Henry. I don’t really like people filming me skate, because I’m weird and it freaks me out, but with Henry it’s different because we’re such good mates. He was just getting into filming skating so we were on a similar level the whole time. I actually didn’t know I was going to have the last part, he wouldn’t show me anything. The whole time he was editing I was begging him, “Don’t use anything stinking, please!” But he did a brilliant job. 

There were times when I’d plan to try something and it would either work or not, but it was definitely better if I was just feeling something on the day. Most nights, I’d get home after skating, watch a skate video and then message Henry at midnight saying, “Let’s go film this.” Then when I woke up the next day, “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve got it man.” It’s the 1am skate high. There are loads of spots in Sheffield, but it’s really hard to find something that hasn’t already been skated. Half the time, you do a trick and then you’ll start questioning yourself; has that already been done? It probably has. In Henry’s vid I did a back tail at the Waitrose bank, I was asking Moggins if it was ABD. He said, “I don’t know, but Jerome (Campbell) probably did it on the way to the shop.” Jerome’s another, like Gary – they don’t need to do much, just watching him cruise around is amazing. A nosebonk over Dev hip, but no one else could do it like that.

What’s the gnarliest lurker occurrence that you’ve seen go down at Dev Green?

Henry: I saw someone get trucked in the head. This guy came in, chatting random shit to this girl. A fight broke out between him and another guy, the guy who started it was on the floor and this girl picked up someone’s skateboard and smacked him in the head with it. There was so much blood.

Hasan: It was my board! I took Fred (Ryan) and Logan (Riley) to Dev for the first time and their first experience was this crackhead walking in and just consuming anything he saw. He’d see a beer on the side and drink it, he took Logan’s wax, anything that was there he’d take. 

Is there anything else you’d like to add as we bring this to a close?

Thank you to everyone in Sheffield. Huge thanks to Gary for supporting me in skating and taking a risk by giving me my first job which is totally brilliant, I’ll always be grateful for that. Thanks to James Cruickshank for sending me some Cons. Thanks to Slugger for supporting me by always helping me out with product and skate trips, and all my lovely friends, I love you all. There’s too many people to name, but everyone has looked after me, not just on a skateboard but at a pivotal point in my life where I’m getting older and trying to figure stuff out. People have almost parented me, everyone’s played a part in that. Thank you everyone for being rad as hell. 

Max: Tell him about the time you kickflipped off that pub table then threw up everywhere.

There’s a video of me kickflipping off the table there, then Timmy told me to down these two pints and he’d give me 20 quid. I downed then and threw up everywhere… he didn’t even give me the 20 quid.

Hasan Media in ‘I FEEL LIKE TIGERS DON’T LIKE BITES’