Pipe lords
get their boards

>> Vancouver’s Skull Skates immortalizes local ambassadors Barry Walsh and Marc Tison

RIPPING WITH RESPECT: Walsh (L) and Tison

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Respect is a big word for guys like Barry Walsh and Marc Tison. Respect for their chosen sport and lifestyle. Respect for the city they come from. Respect for people who keep it real. As members of the famed Embassy MTL (also known as EMBC MTL) skateboarding crew, Walsh and Tison are also the newest faces for Peter “P.D.” Ducommun’s Skull Skates in Montreal. This week, Skull Skates launches its limited edition Barry Walsh and Marc Tison boards, and for the Montreal duo, it’s as close as they’d like to get to a valediction of their 20-plus years on four wheels.

Vancouver-based Skull Skates has always had an independent streak, shunning the sport’s fluctuating trends over the years. Like Walsh and Tison, the company remained apart from the bigger names, and bigger money, the sport had to offer. “It’s a perfect philosophical fit,” Walsh says. “He’s bringing his brand into Montreal with respect.”

Walsh, 36, spent much of the 1990s in Vancouver, living the skater bum lifestyle, while Tison, 34, made numerous back and forth visits (“We’d call our welfare cheques ‘skate camp,’” says Tison). Eventually they got to know P.D. well—indeed, Skull Skates sponsored Walsh from 1998 to 2000—but when Walsh moved back to Montreal permanently in 2000, the relationship dropped off, until a recent trip here opened P.D.’s eyes to the vibrancy of the Montreal skateboarding scene. It didn’t take him long to offer them the deal for a limited edition board.

There’s no hiding the mutual admiration between Montreal and Vancouver. While Tison and Walsh hold Skull Skates up as an example of what a skateboard manufacturer can be when it’s not pandering to every whim and whimsy of consumers, P.D. says, “Those two fellows really represent the spirit of skateboarding, without sounding too cheesy about it. Skateboarding is our way of life, it’s what we do every day, our means of expression and creativity. And they typify all of that. They’re skaters for life. And beyond that, they totally rip.”

The boards are custom made, and custom designed. Tison and Walsh got their friend, Dave Cummings of Tatouage Pointe St-Charles, to do the graphics (Walsh has a pin-up’s legs around a large bone with shamrocks surrounding it, Tison a bottle topped by a crown, and both have the Embassy MTL logo, creatively borrowed from the Montreal Expos, on them as well), and kept them in Skull Skates’ traditional black and grey. “We really saw the graphics as having a much more authentic tattoo look,” says Walsh, as opposed to a graffiti look.

And while the boards are similar to the naked eye, there are differences in wheelbase (the distance between the trucks) and width: The Tison board is 7 15/16 inches wide by 31 3/4 long with a 14-and-a-quarter inch wheelbase, while the Walsh is 7 3/4 inches wide by 31 1/2 long with a 14-inch wheelbase. There are also slight differences in the nose and tail kicks and concave depths. “It’s all about personal preference,” says Walsh.

As lords of the Olympic pipe, the iconic tunnel out by the Olympic Stadium and a must-ride destination for any skateboarder travelling though here, Walsh and Tison are aware of their status as Montreal’s leading skateboarding voices, even as they try to remain humble.

“We aren’t making much money from this, but we’ve moved mountains,” says Walsh. “I like to think that we’re worthy of having his brand with our name.”

The Barry Walsh and Marc Tison boards will be
launched on Friday, Dec. 7 at Off the Hook
(1021 Ste-Catherine W.) 7–11 p.m.