Skating street
Local skateboarding legend keeps his sport and lifestyle down and dirty
by CHRIS BARRY
October 6, 2011
Photo by SHARON DAVIES
Name: Barry Walsh
Age: “Forty years young”
Occupation: Skateboarding legend/instructor
Bio: This way-cool, way-chill, free-spirited hunk of a St-Henri heartbreaker found his first semi-decent skateboard in his neighbour’s trash at age 11 and “immediately knew this was what I wanted to do in life—I was hooked instantly.” Naturally gifted, Barry figures he won “about 95 per cent” of all the competitions he entered before turning 21, yet by 1991 realized that if he was ever going to make a serious name for himself in skateboarding circles, he’d better get his sorry ass out to Vancouver “where the industry is.” So off to B.C. he went, “following my dream as hard as I could,” and while “it’s not like I’m buying houses through skateboarding, I have been able to live off it for over 20 years. Maybe as a struggling artist—like, I can barely pay my rent sometimes—but I’d be skateboarding even if I didn’t have sponsors.” Widely recognized as the guy who put Montreal on the skateboarding map, Barry says his Embassy MTL crew “still represent the roots, the street, of what skateboarding is. We keep it close to the art, none of this corporate gumball shit you see everywhere these days.”
A few sponsors he’s secured: “Vans, 5Boro Skateboards, Ace Trucks, Urban Ambush.”
In his skating heyday, were chicks lining up to score a taste of his mighty love bone? “Yeah, there were some, but it’s not like today. If I were 15 right now I’d have to go out and find a condom sponsor.”
The difference between “corporate skaters” and Barry’s crew: “These corporate skaters take it like a job; they train, they eat well. We’re more about the essence, skating backyard swimming pools, cracking brews, hanging out, basically staying true to the art we fell in love with before skating became this big commodity. Skating in spots never intended for skating keeps us grounded, too. These indoor skate parks with their corporate banners all over the walls and man-made ramps and…it’s too domestic, you know?”
His preferred skating location: “The Whistle” by the Big O. “It’s a 100 per cent natural spot that was never intended for skating, so it’s like pure heroin to a junkie, the real deal, perfect. It hasn’t been exploited by these corporations who sell skateboarding like you sell Slim Jims. It’s this big concrete whistle that was built for the ’76 Olympics as a tribute to Native culture. I actually cowrote a book about it in 2006 called Pipe Fiends [mudscout.com]. It’s a way hard spot to skate, which is one reason why we earned so much respect for learning to rip it. Now people come from all around the world to skate it, but even the big name pros have trouble.”
One reason why Montreal has developed a rep as an awesome skateboarding city: “Because our street spots are still natural, not yet capped with posts or chains like in other cities, where they weld knobs onto hand rails to deliberately make them unskate-able. They spend hundreds of thousands trying to kill skateboarding, but its like graffiti: you can paint over it but it always comes back.”
Something else he’s got going: The Walsh Skate School (walshskateschool.blogspot.com), which has a new session starting in November.
Last book read: The Boombox Project, by Lyle Owerko.
Musical preferences: Peter Tosh, John Prine, Yellowman.
Words of Wisdom: “You can buy fashion, but you can’t buy style.” ■
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