Rowan Davis
Rowan Davis is from a place called Medowie, which is a little town 40-minutes north of Newcastle that has a population of less than 10,000. It takes four-hours by public transport to commute from Medowie to Sydney – a journey that Rowan knows all too well. He’s spent a fair chunk of the past few years on buses, ferries and trains, trekking to Sydney and Newcastle to film clips that you might have seen in Medley (2018), Disc (2019) or his own VX production, Twenty Three Hundred (2019). Having recently turned 18 and gotten his license, these days, Rowan can enjoy the luxury of driving to the spots that he wants to skate.
When I catch up with Rowan on the phone, he’s at his day job, painting houses, but he takes an hour off to chat with me about his mad OCD approach to skating scary spots; his bizarre preference for 9.25 inch boards with size six shoes; and how he chose to ride for Girl over Polar. As you examine the array of insane hammers that Rowan managed to stack up, bear in mind that he had around 30 photos to choose from – which would have been enough for three or four feature interviews.
Hey, Rowan. How’s it going?
Yeah, good, I’m just at work right now. I was just rolling some cladding in the hot sun. I’ve been doing this painting gig a few days a week to get cash. I’ve been painting houses – exterior and interior.
Do you also work at a local indoor skatepark called Sanbah Grindhouse?
Nah, I was working there, but I ended up quitting because I was kind of over teaching [skate] lessons. I was getting three hours of work a week, and it was a bit draining driving 40 minutes to work for three hours.
It looks like a really fun little skatepark though.
Yeah, it’s so sick. I wish there was a ledge or a flat bar there, that would make it the one, but there’s heaps of tranny, and it goes around in a big loop, so you skate around as fast as you can. It’s pretty fun. I skate it when it’s raining, but if it’s not raining, it’s kind of pointless, especially now in summer. It’s so hot in that shed.
“I put on that song by Dido, ‘White Flag’, which is pretty much about not giving in.”
