Interview with Dean John Edwards
Dean first encountered skateboarding when a couple of boys brought skateboards into school and he was ’blown away’. Dean’s mother bought him his first board in 1987. There were few places to skate when Dean lived in Towcester, so he would join his parents when they visited Milton Keynes and skate whilst they went shopping. He remembers the first time he skateboarded in Milton Keynes because his friend Wayne fell over and broken his ankle. They did not venture too far from the shopping centre because they did not know where they were going.
When Dean moved to Milton Keynes in 1990 he came across other skateboarders and was shown the Bus Station. Dean remembers thinking ‘wow, this is something else’. Dean explains that they learnt tricks by looking through magazines and watching videos. Dean reminisces on watching videos in the shop in the bus station. Chris, who owned the shop, asked Dean to assist him with a competition he held. They did not realise it would be so popular- when in fact, ‘everyone in the whole British skate scene was there’. Deans talks of watching Rob Selley’s career as a skateboarder, and says his turning point was his trip to San Francisco in 1992, saying ‘he came back a different skater’. Dean’s favourite spot used to be the train station in Milton Keynes. He also used to like the ‘Beige’ (centre of the business district), before they put the stops there and enjoyed going to the bus station, where he would stay for whole days at a time.
To conclude, for Dean skateboarding has given him his best friends and a bit of an identity. He feels as though he has a unique connection to it and feels very lucky to have been able to access it so easily spending his teen years in Milton Keynes.
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