To coincide with our hosting of Dodi Sargoni Spey’s part from Phil Parker’s Lloyds-centric video ‘Cavea’, Jono Coote sat down in a beer garden with both Phil and Dodi to discuss the spot’s history, binmen alliances, who would best lay claim to a resurgent Kingpin ‘Ten Tricks’ episode at the amphitheatre and more. Read on below and watch Dodi’s part here, or at the very end of this article.
It is a hot May weekend and the sun is slowly roasting the inhabitants of The Pump House’s beer garden as yet another staff member asks us if the pint in her hand is for our table, something which has been happening with cyclical repetition since we first sat here. The Pump House has kept alive the now-archaic seeming table service system adopted during Covid and we are regularly offered rounds of cider and plates of cheesy chips, which would be nice if they were free, but they aren’t, so we decline. Seeing the light dying in the bartender’s eyes when she realises that our group had started off as one table before spreading out onto two, with separate table numbers and needs, is a reminder of how sticking doggedly to a set of rules is not always the smartest of tactics. It is something Phil Parker – with whom I am sat, along with Dodi, whose part we are hosting, to conduct the following interview – was keen to avoid when working on his recent video ‘Cavea’, which focuses on the scene which has formed in and around Lloyds Amphitheatre. It is a scene which developed organically and this is the approach which he adopted whilst filming the video, parking up at the spot and pointing his lens at whatever unfolded amongst the various ledge-crazed Bristolians and visitors who graced the spot since the project began back in 2023, creating in the finished project a fitting ode to a space synonymous in the eyes of skateboarding with the city in which it was built.
Lloyds is the perfect example of how an otherwise unassuming slice of the urban sprawl can become a cultural hub, a repository for collective memory and in so many ways a huge amount more than the sum of its physical parts. To do the video justice the three of us had originally planned to do this interview at the spot itself; but, with the sun beating down, Phil and Dodi requested a location with easier access to cold beverages and I did not need asking twice, which is why we began this interview just after I gently turned another staff member, hair tangled with sweat and looking slightly delirious as she tried to foist another pint of Thatchers upon me, away. Sorry mate, we’re getting deep into amphitheatres of the mind here.
‘Cavea’ was filmed over two distinct periods with a gap, right? What brought about the gap in filming, and what made you come back to it?
Phil: Well there’s a lot of footage, a lot of old stuff of Mike Arnold, mainly second angles from his Lloyds part that subsequently got removed to possibly be saved for something else further down the line. It basically started when I bought a VX for £70 off Gumtree in January 2023. I hadn’t really been around skating for ages, but getting this cheap VX made me want to get back into filming again. Then, shortly after that, Rich Smith sold me a Mark 1 lens at mates rates. The whole video is made up of stuff I’ve filmed with that camera and lens. There’s no time jumps in the footage, it’s all from then onwards. Having my daughter, who’s now 6, meant that I couldn’t really spend ages travelling around to other spots. I just plonked myself at Lloyds and filmed whoever and whatever was up for being filmed. There was no real agenda other than to capture something of the scene. Everyone is always skating there, it’s convenient. Over the first few months it was obvious that our Dodi here was quite hungry. Arthur Myhill was keen. It was leaning towards a project based around two full parts from those two, along with a montage of everyone else, and then Jord Lightowler just gets stuff so quickly that he ended up with a lot. I just let it go the way it was going to go, because filming skateboarding is so unpredictable. Arthur had an injury that cut him a bit short so we didn’t quite get the part we were hoping for from him, and then with Jord accumulating footage amongst other people I decided to keep it in the way it had grown from the start.
What brought on the decision to make a spot-specific video? I like how you used the back of the spot, the nooks and crannies. Were there times when the creative juices were flagging and you cursed the day you did?
Phil: No, I enjoy that and I think everyone involved enjoyed the challenge of trying to skate Lloyds in ways it hadn’t been skated. And the pressure of being at one spot was actually a convenience, so quite the opposite of what you might have thought; this is where I’m going to be with a camera, without fail. Not having to traipse across town to different spots made it an easy, obvious way to do a project. It was still operating as a building when Mike filmed his part, then shortly after that it closed, so some of those other little spots around the corner have only been an option fairly recently. Aesthetically it was always a bit of a goal to get footage in areas of the building that haven’t been skated that much. Or even at all; the bits Jord skates round the back, I don’t think anyone has ever even touched them.
I mean, what can be left down the big three now really? Was there any level of militancy when it came to ABDs?
Dodi: I prefer to think of them as ‘honorary mentions’.
Phil: There’s definitely an element of honorary mentions. I’m the opposite of militant in some ways, I’d egg people on. I mean, it’s a scene video – it’s not that serious. If you want to do something, you can just do it. I’ll happily watch and film and not be too tight about whether it’s an NBD or not. Jord’s nollie heel, that’s an ABD, Joe Haskins’ hardflip is an ABD, but even if someone has hardflipped it, to some extent it’s a totally different trick. You’ve got a totally different skater, potentially doing the trick in a totally different way. And who’s going to turn around, in the middle of filming for a scene video, and go, “That’s already been done,” and just shut down the opportunity to see someone do something down it again? Especially with the fast paced nature of skateboarding these days, I think in some ways it’s a good thing to have ABDs. It jogs a memory. The only NBD that might have been within someone’s grasp is the halfcab flip.
Doddy: Standing on the shoulders of giants. Every video is an ode to the filmmaker’s inspiration.
In terms of inspiration, apart from obviously Mike’s part and the Josh and Layth clip, did you find any other videos of people filming at specific spots?
Phil: I wouldn’t say anything inspired the project as a whole, but in terms of generally filming, everything I’d done on a VX prior to this project was on a Raynox mod lens. You need to be slightly further back with that, and this was the first time I’d properly got to grips with using a Mark 1. I’d watch Quentin Guthrie’s videos, his filming is massively inspiring. Filming skating is like actually skating in that you want to capture it this very specific way, and an inch difference in the way you film something can make such a difference to the way it looks. So there’s an element of satisfaction in being able to film things the way I want to. And actually getting a project out… I’ve made videos before and put them on YouTube, they’ve sat on hard drives for ages and I’ve not really pushed them properly, but this one has naturally gone in the direction of being able to push it a little bit more.
And that makes sense with the spot itself being so iconic, all the skaters in it, you being so involved with the Bristol scene for so long…
Phil: Yeah, and that’s one of the best things about it; being able to showcase all the talented guys out there doing stuff. It’s a privilege to be able to capture stuff, have an incentive for people to try stuff and now to have something to look back on.
Dodi: And it was nice seeing your style of filming evolve as you became more experienced at filming, and filming at Lloyds specifically. You could see new techniques of filming there develop, a lot of satisfaction came from seeing the spot shape your filming. Most people in the video were very well acquainted with the history of Lloyds and the various edits that have been made down there. Everyone has Mike’s part memorised and Josh’s part memorised. It was fun to see a different style being utilised at the spot.
Phil: A lot goes on at Lloyds as well. You’ve got all the festival things, the bollards, the concrete blocks…
Dodi: The hen do’s…
Yeah, there must have been some interesting pedestrian interactions during the making of the video, right?
Phil: Annoyingly I didn’t actually get any footage of him, but from the first few weeks of filming onwards there was one of the guys who comes down in his truck to empty the bins, he was probably my favourite character throughout. He’d pull up, recognise me because I was always there with a camera, always say hello.
Dodi: He held the key to Lloyds, unlocked the top tier.
Phil: We moved the bins, I had a chat with him and said that we’d moved them and he let us get away with that; “Don’t worry mate, your secret’s safe with me.” But, sadly, I didn’t get any footage of him. And you do see a lot of stuff, but I didn’t really capture any of that.
Mike was saying you were pretty much a Lloyds local from the get go Dodi?
Dodi: Growing up in Bristol, for ages we didn’t have any inkling that the amphitheatre was there. We were acquainted with the city centre, but we weren’t aware of the various places round the harbourside. I think one day our mum just drove us down and we stumbled across Lloyds. We’d been to a lot of skateparks as kids, had a few collisions with BMXers which left some emotional scars, then all of a sudden we were at this huge, open space. When you’re a child your bedroom seems massive, so I’m sure you can imagine that Lloyds seemed absolutely humongous. There were all these skaters sitting in the typical spot, and the idea of sitting there at that age was so unattainable. Seeing them flying around, doing tricks off the second and third tiers, was intimidating. I couldn’t tell you what year that was, but Lloyds has been a constant presence in my life since then.
Even when I briefly put down skateboarding for other stuff, that was the spot that reintroduced me to skating. My neighbour Julian had a couple of old Fifty Fifty DVDs, including Jus Foolin, and it was amazing to watch that; I was aware of the shop, but didn’t know they had such a momentous video to their name. Obviously it has a lot of Lloyds footage in it, and that inspired me to skate again, go back to Lloyds and make that my hub. A lot of my progression derived primarily from skating there and you can see that in the video – there’s a lot of sliding tricks, because Lloyds is a hard spot to grind at. That’s very evident when you see the part and trick selection. It’s been hugely impactful in my life. I should also add that most of the tricks I learned at Lloyds were inspired by watching my brother Mungo skate. He’d be skating Lloyds practically every single day.
Phil: It’s quite funny, before Dodi’s break from skating I’d been filming mostly with Mungo, but he’s quite hard to pin down and get inspired these days while Dodi has been in the mix and skating Lloyds more than ever.
Dodi: It was funny how the dynamic grew as we filmed together more and more. When you were filming Mungo we knew each other, but weren’t well acquainted.
Phil: There are a few minutes of footage in the archives of him, it’s there for anyone who wants to find it. Now he’s taken a back seat and you’ve been around way more, but he’s still got a trick in your part. That’s what I like about the project, there’s an element of brotherly love to it. You’ve got you and Mungo, Bear and Gill’s part, it’s one of the most satisfying things to look at.
Dodi: There are a lot of Lloyds brothers. The Keals, the Burnhams, the Samis, Archie and Ollie Lock.
Phil: Yeah, there’s that underlying theme of brotherhood.
Dodi: It’s nice, even when I was out of the loop skating-wise, when I came back I didn’t even need to message anyone to go skate, I could just go to Lloyds and have a nice interaction with whoever was there.
Phil: That’s a thing with Lloyds, as much as it’s a mecca for skating, it’s also a nice place for people to just chill out. Again, that was another thing that made it so obvious and easy to just plonk myself down and film there. And it’s in those moments where people are just chilling and skating that something might happen spontaneously, whereas if you go specifically to a spot it’s usually with an agenda. That’s something that’s removed from Lloyds as it’s a chill spot, someone might just be skating and suddenly be in the zone to do something.
Was there anything specifically that someone did that surprised you?
Phil: Dodi’s slappy switch crook, I’m stoked on that. The thought of trying it is actually quite scary, and I made him do it three times. He did it once and said he needed to redo it, then did it again and I said I needed to redo that, then we got one that was spot on. Arthur’s slappy back lip manual kickflip is incredible. He was definitely going to do that when he was trying it, but the one he made he did so well.
Dodi: It’s not really a trick, but during the course of a month Jord absolutely shut everything down. His success rate was impeccable. And he’d be so mellow about it, just cruising. Also, I was there when he tried his ender the first time but missed the make, and this guy wouldn’t let me watch the footage so the first time I saw it was at the premiere. I was a bit faded, so it’s hard to remember the whole video, but the ender really, really sticks out because of how bloody well he stomped it.
Phil: So it happened on that, and a couple of other tricks; a good omen for Jord is if he snaps his board and has to do the trick on someone else’s. Three or four tricks in the video are on other people’s boards. With the ender, he needed someone else’s board. It was Henry’s board, it had fresher grip and a little more concave, and you could see that he was instantly getting closer when he started using that. Jord would be on standby, waiting for someone to finish getting or not getting a trick, then he’d step in and get a trick within ten minutes.
Dodi: You’re probably not going to like this Phil, but Arthur’s switch tre down the stairs. I’d seen him trying that trick a lot on flat ground, but that’s not the easiest gap to skate. It’s a hard aspect of Lloyds to translate on film, though you did a good job.
Phil: I didn’t do a good job, that’s why it’s in the credits.
Dodi: I mean with the other tricks that went down. It’s just unfortunate that the best trick to go down wasn’t necessarily to your liking.
Phil: It was very early on in my getting used to the Mark 1 and I filmed it like I should have filmed it with a Raynox, so I was too far back. It just didn’t have the va-va-voom it needed.
Dodi: Oh, and one more in terms of tricks that left me speechless – it’s quite a low impact trick but it’s so technical and if someone doesn’t skate Lloyds a lot it’s hard to convey the level of difficulty – Gill’s backside 180 switch 50-50 alley-oop switch frontside 180 out had me frothing. I was blown away by that.
Phil: You’re lucky to get any Gill footage, you’re lucky to even see him skate so to get a trick that he’s gone out of his way to get and is happy with… I’m stoked on that.
How many boards ended up in the drink over the course of filming?
Phil: Henry Gibbs lost one, but we weren’t filming anything. But I think that’s it, and we were just skating Lloyds, not filming. He’s lost a few in there.
Dodi: But it’s not as common as you might think, considering how exposed it is. I’ve had many close calls where I’ve been sprinting after a board, I’ve even hurt myself doing that, but I’ve never lost one. That kind of annoys me, to be honest. More boards were broken than lost to the water during the making of the video.
Phil: Mark Pritchard lost a board to the water the other day and actually managed to retrieve it. He went out with a friend magnet fishing and they actually managed to get it out.
Dodi: Just before Indy moved to China, Layth Sami managed to source an older set of trucks from a board some guy magnet fished from the river and he was stoked.
Layth Sami is a good segue into asking both of you what your top three tricks to have been sent down the three are…
Phil: I’ll say Korahn’s switch back three, that’s pretty high up there. Did Harry Lintell front three shuv it? Actually naa, it was backside. But that always springs to mind. I’m also going to say Layth’s switch tre, especially as he did it twice, 17 years apart. And the latter one was just brilliant.
Dodi: It flips in a funny way, but that makes it look more badarse. My first one is going to be Tim Crawley’s nollie flip. He was the first person to do that, and nollie flips are one of my favourite tricks. My second one, I’m drawn to more simplistic tricks and ones that I like to do, so a really memorable one for me is Stalker’s backside flip. There’s been a lot of backside flips done down Lloyds, but that one is easily the most memorable. And I’ll say Korahn’s fakie frontside heelflip. I love doing them on flat, but the idea of doing it down the three is pretty insane.
Korahn is my favourite Lloyds skater.
Dodi: Yeah, there’s no contention there… but, for the sake of playing devil’s advocate, who else could it be? People are legends at Lloyds for different reasons, like Korahn is known for skating the big three, but there are plenty of skaters who are very well known for other parts of the spot. The big three jams back in the day were very exciting, it’s a shame we haven’t seen one in a while. It would be a good tradition to revive. It encourages progression and participation there, and the atmosphere is amazing. Everyone sends it, the crowd is a huge factor in going for shit every try. As a bonus trick, I’ll shout out Charles Munro’s nollie back bigspin. It’s not one you see very often and he absolutely smashed the shit out of it.
Who was the first person to ollie the three?
Dodi: The consensus is that it was Carter. I’ve also heard it might have been Giles, I don’t know his full name.
I’ll put it to Pigdog tonight.
Phil: He’ll know… it actually might have been him.
Pigdog, later that evening via Instagram: Officially it’s Carter, but ironically I had thought it was me! I ollied it before they finished building it. I think the entire set of white ledges were built, but the tiled floor was only built on the right hand side. Since I mentioned that, I’ve also heard Carter mention he ollied it before it was finished being built so my theory is we probably both ollied it on the same weekend or day at different times? Maybe!?
As the person whose name comes up most often when discussing Kingpin’s ‘Ten Tricks’ series Phil, who do you think would be the best contender for one based at Lloyds?
Phil: Those types of short edits which were happening kind of just before the rise of Instagram were great, it would be nice to see a resurgence of that. The reason mine had such an impact was kind of a fluke, it’s not technically the best skating but I think the quietness of Dean Lane on a summer’s afternoon, with the sound of the seagulls and the cadence of skating the ramp and then coming around all fell into place and gave more impact to the skating than actually might have been due. Someone should definitely do the Lloyds ten tricks. I mean, it would have to be Korahn. He’d have to be pushing himself so far, for Korahn to do ten NBDs at Lloyds… We should put that to him, maybe that’s the way to rekindle the ten tricks fire.
Dodi: Korahn is the obvious choice, but I’m going to throw another name out there in terms of his style of skateboarding and the way he approaches things; Josh Arnott. He has a really, really solid process for skating Lloyds and it was cool to see his DC Lloyds part come out because we hadn’t seen a full part there before. Seeing some of the tricks he filmed for that video, now you’ve put the question to us, I think he’d be a really good choice if Korahn wasn’t down for whatever reason – but I hope you are, Korahn.
Is there anything either of you would like to finish up with?
A massive shout out to Rich for selling that lens to me, to all the skaters involved, and to you guys for being up to host Dodi’s part.
Dodi: And a shout out to all the people close to us who withstood the hardship of us being obsessive skateboarders and spending a ridiculous amount of time at this spot. And, like Phil said, everyone who got clips for the video. As with every project there are times you start to question it, but when anyone else came in and got a clip it was always really reassuring to know that lots of people wanted to be involved.
Filmed + Edited by: Phil Parker
