JOHNNO HALCHENKO
Johnno ‘Spliff Cheese’ Halchenko is a bit of a mysterious character. Not too many people had heard of him until late-2018, when he dropped a solo part on YouTube that featured some pretty burly tricks. Between a late front shove down Melbourne’s William Street double set; a long 50-50 on a double kinked handrail; and a heelflip boardslide down the Flinders Street rail, it was quite an entrance. He followed it up by closing out a homie video called Loitering with a 19-stair ollie in central Melbourne that many have scoped, but none had conquered. And now you’re looking at his first print feature interview and photo spread, shot by Andrew Mapstone.
Digging up info on a young dude like Johnno is always fun. His filmer, Charles Sheehan, sent through a list of talking points, which included stuff like “splitting nuts” with no context whatsoever. Ben Currie told me, “If he’s getting beaten and worked, fuck, you’re going to hear about it. Dude has quite the temper”. And a clip on Insta showed him 50-50ing another massive kinked rail in regional Victoria, rolling out to the road, flicking a tré flip and then staunchly focussing his board. And with that, it was time to talk to the man himself.
Let’s start with the basics, how old are you, where are you from and where do you live now?
“I just thought of the dumbest Instagram name possible, and there you go: Spliffcheese666.”
I’m 20 years old, currently living in Torquay, and originally I’m from Geelong, but I moved around heaps growing up. I lived in Geelong, moved to Torquay, then moved to Cooriemungle, which is pretty much just a road. I went to school at Simpson for a bit, kicked it there for a quick sec, then moved to Curdievale, mate – right by the river. The river connected to our backyard, it was pretty fresh. We had a kayak – used it once. I went to school in Timboon for a while, then moved to Port Fairy for a year or two, hung around a place called Warrnambool until we all got over it and moved back to Torquay. I’ve lived here ever since. Bitta this, bitta that. All these places are between an hour
