My luck or lack of, is legendary. Over time this either breaks you or makes you stronger and to some degree I believe this is a choice
Rob Steele
Radii Ramps
Age?
53 3/4
Location?
Romford, Essex
Never stopped, New Starter or Comeback King?
Comeback King, although it hardly feels like it
Bike?
Bonedeth Creepozoid, Hitchforks, Other parts from Bonebeth, Mankind, 34r & Alone. Many thanks to James Waeland and James Hitchcox for the gift.
Where do you ride?
Just now it seems a little dishonest to say I ride anywhere, as work has fully taken over my life. But Rom of course and before that I had my own miniramp setup in my old unit. Skaterham for vert nibbles.
Tell us little about your early ROM days?
Blimey. It’s funny how it seems to occupy such a lot of my life, yet in reality I only rode for a very short period of time there back in the stone age.
But for those three years 82-84 riding and Rom was everything to me. Standout memories for me are Marco Lara, Stephen Dalet and the trains at the end of the session – full speed, in, out or through everything in the park. There was no thought given to regular or oppo, if you were in the middle of that train you’d better be following the line or everyone behind you died haha.
Watching Andy Ruffell front hop all the way down from the top of the slalom slope, over to the pool, onto the coping and in. I’d like to see that done now! Meeting Chris Young there got me on the Skyliners team and we did a ton of demos together in 83/early 84, lots of schools & youth centres etc.
Following that after knowing Glyn Lewis for a while he asked me to go and ride with him on Ammaco. That only came about through riding with him at Rom. Many laughs with the locals, Craig Campbell sat on his saddle looking miserable for hours on end, Neil Ruffell blowing minds even as a young ‘un, angry skateboarders starting fights, Mason Smiths mum taking me to one side and asking me to “please look after my Mason”, becoming friends with Andy Peerless and my dads haulage company bringing the first ever fabricated ramp to Rom, the original halfpipe with no platforms…
I’ll stop now as I’m beginning to ramble but special mention should also go to the bank of the reservoir heading towards the pool, a windy day and the one footed dead sailor that robbed me of my ACL and any future career. 1983, 16 years old. Done.
How do you feel about seeing what has become of Rom?
It really saddens me to see what’s become of Rom. Obviously we all have our own opinions as to how & why etc, and what we would do to put things right. I’ve had countless conversations with people who come to me and say “all this place needs is blah blah blah” but the reality is it’s bloody hard to run any skatepark in this country, let alone an outdoor one and I doff my cap to anyone having a go.
I keep my fingers crossed that one day soon we will see Rom open again and it’s future secured – it’s not beyond the realm of possibility, there’s some very good people working very hard to try and make it happen.
How and why did you get into ramp building?
Long story short; completely by accident. My chosen career was road haulage management but after a couple of hilariously timed redundancies I took the decision to walk away from that industry completely. No more desk, no more shirt and trousers.
I had trained as a vehicle technician (mechanic) and had done quite well, won some awards and such like, so I decided to put it all into practice and go on the road as a mobile mechanic. This would be 1991. By 1993 I was using a small barn on a derelict farm as my workshop. Next door was a part worn tyre company in a much larger barn.
Around the summertime I was sat at home with nothing to do and a show came on the telly – you know what I’m going to say – High5 featuring Mat Hoffman and Dennis McCoy. My mind was immediately blown and in an instant all I could think about again was BMX. Within a month, the part worn tyre company had done a bunk, their barn became available and it had a 30ft high roof… Now all I can think about is an indoor vert ramp, just like Mats.
I remembered Andy Peerless from a decade before had messed around with ramps at Crystal Palace and that he was working as a roofer. Whipped out the Yellow Pages and there he was. Gave him a ring and said ” Andy, I have a barn, I want a vert ramp but I have no money or expertise”. To my surprise he said to me ” Rob, I have someone with money who wants a vert ramp but has no venue”. You couldn’t make it up haha.
So the three of us got together and with my venue, Andy’s expertise and Hugh’s money we built a vert ramp. By December 1993 it was done. I had no bike at that point even but I did have a 27ft wide indoor vert ramp. So that ramp got a little famous as there weren’t many indoor verts at that time and Andy started getting phone calls. Before you know it, we’re building ramps for a living and Fearless Ramps was born.
I worked for Andy until the end of 1999 when it became clear our friendship was in jeopardy because of work. I chose friendship, resigned and walked onto a building site for the first time working with my friend Jay in structural glazing & cladding. A proper job, haha.
I went off to finally get my knee reconstructed in ’07, during my very complicated rehab the global recession hit and my job in construction evaporated. I went back to Fearless Ramps in ’09 for one year to help Andy through a difficult personal period, and then left again. by 2011 I had decided I was never going to work for anyone ever again, put my thinking cap on and came up with Radii Skatepark Repairs. The thinking behind it was to position myself in the market where I wouldn’t be treading on my friends toes (Andy) and I would offer myself out to people doing the worst of the worst ramp work which is like most trades, repairs.
Tell us a little about your business?
So before Radii, there was no specific repair industry and certainly no technology in it. If you wanted your ramp repaired as a council, you went back to the original installer who often did a crap job as they weren’t interested, or you were at the mercy of the playground companies, by and large the biggest bunch of vagabonds and scoundrels you could possibly meet.
We offer a one stop shop if you will, where no job is genuinely too big or too small. Anything at all relating to your skatepark, we have the solution. Natural as we’ve moved along we’ve built ramps and smallish skateparks as well, sometimes it’s more cost effective to replace than repair. But when people ask me what I do for a living, I always reply ” I’m a skatepark repairman”.
Who tend to be your customers these days?
My customers these days are mostly smaller town and parish councils. I work for very few large councils. It’s not something I’ve engineered at all, just the way it’s panned out. My clients and I are all on first name terms and the level of trust between they and I is extremely high. I’m very proud of that. I also build the odd back garden ramp and the very occasional event setup.
Has the trend towards concrete made it tough to operate as a ramp builder? Do you think it will come full circle?
Where to start… It has made it tougher to be a ramp builder. This is evident in the number of firms that are out of business now or have moved entirely into the concrete market. However, it hasn’t impacted my business at all; as previously mentioned, I’m a skatepark repairman!
Building new stuff is secondary here to repairing old. I’m very passionate about that, especially if the suggested new stuff is crap and we all can name at least one park like that eh? No I don’t think it’ll come full circle but it’s definitely coming around, I’ve been to several meetings recently where the client has dismissed the idea of concrete before they’ve even spoken to me, and rightly so in most cases. Too many crap concrete parks around and the clients are wising up.
Do your councils understand the differences between wood and concrete parks or is it all a numbers game for them?
That’s tricky. Here’s the thing; if I say to you would you rather ride a wooden mini or a concrete mini you will almost certainly say wooden. You will then go on to say it’s a little more predicable, a little nicer to slam on and generally has a nicer feel. This is very typical feedback I get and the word I use to sum it up to clients is soul.
Traditional ramps made from concrete have no soul, in my humble opinion. But that can be a hard sell as some clients might think I’m just trying to flog them a fabricated ramp because I don’t work in concrete. That’s where the trust comes in hopefully.
Conversely, I believe that bowls should only ever be concrete, so that’s what I tell my clients. By far and away the biggest problem is the miss selling of concrete as maintenance free. This is quite simply a lie and the concrete firms should be ashamed of themselves.
With regards to it being a numbers game, my experience largely is no, that’s not the case. But remember, my clients are small town and parish councils and they do care. They really care in most cases, so they are keen to spend money carefully and wisely and often unlike large councils they’re not being forced by a matrix into so called ‘best value’ – a misnomer if ever I heard one.
What ramp/park that you built or repaired are you the most proud of?
Southwater. Not because of the work necessarily but because of the situation. I was on Facebook one evening and saw a post from Nick Hayday of BMXMDB which simply said “Southwater RIP”. I messaged him to ask what was going on as I’d been riding there just a few weeks before and it was still in one piece more or less but totally repairable.
He said it had been condemned as was due to be demolished. I cold called the council the next morning, introduced myself and begged them not to do anything rash until we’d met on site. They agreed and that set in motion a series of repairs and upgrades over the next few years to keep the old girl going.
We’re still way under budget compared to a replacement park too so it was a massive win all around. Now Southwater faces new challenges and we’re in the thick of it again but for now it remains our finest hour – so far…
You faced a huge challenge when your business burnt down. How did you manage to bounce back?
I’ve had some setbacks in my life. My friends joke that the best place they can be is near me because if somethings going to happen, it will happen to me and they’ll be fine haha. My luck or lack of, is legendary. Over time this either breaks you or makes you stronger and to some degree I believe this is a choice.
I chose not to break a few years ago but I’m tested on a very regular basis. When I got the call that Rom was on fire, it was a feeling kinda like “oh well, here we go again”. Typically, I’ll assess what’s going on, prioritise what to deal with first and just crack on with that. And keep going. And keep going.
The fire was no different. I don’t think I bounced back as such, I think I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and slowly but surely we got back on track. As of this writing we’re 18 months on and I’m still dealing with the effects of that fire but we’re pretty damn close to being able to say we’re over it. Once the new West Chiltington skatepark is completed, I can breathe and say we’ve beaten the fire.
One thing I know for sure is that I wouldn’t have carried on had it not have been for the support of the skatepark community. I’ve never felt like anyone’s really had my back in life until the day of that fire.
People I barely knew offering help and the real, honest and genuine vibe that people wanted to keep me around. I remain truly humbled by the whole thing. If anyone’s interested, I did a little year end video explaining in more detail which you can find on the Radii Facebook page.
I call 2018 the best worst year of my life.
Tell us a little about how you’ve supported the MK event over the years by building ramps etc?
RADBMX MK. Or the annual corksniffers convention as I’m sure some of my Ride On brethren would refer to it haha. So I was one of the early members of that forum and whilst I don’t collect (let’s skim over the £10k collection I lost in that fire) it was fun to share stories on there and offer advice to people who were actually going to ride their bikes.
The MK event came along and it was a race meet and weekend get together, very low key at first. A few years in after being knocked back continually I managed to put a ramp in just for shits and giggles. It was just a 4ft quarter and a very small kickturn ramp which turned out to be quite the hit.
Well, to everyone except the organisers who held the opinion that it was a waste of time and no one rode. I did do it for free though, so no harm no foul in my eyes. After that first year demand rose and it has become a regular feature, although I have to lock horns almost every year with someone over something. No good deed goes unpunished as the saying goes.
I see my job at MK as guardian of the ramp area. I rarely leave my spot next to the quarter – I have one walk around the event each day to say hello to people and look at bikes I never remember anyone riding haha. We have a 100% safety record at MK and I’m very proud of that. If someone’s too drunk, I’ll have a word. If someone’s letting the occasion get the better of them and they’re riding over their head, I’ll have a word.
Overall it works well and it’s a nice way to spend a few hours actually, watch a bit of riding, talk some crap over a brew, reminisce etc. From a business point of view, I support this and 3ft High & Rising, as you know. MK is my biggest investment annually, I subsidise the event to the tune of anywhere £500-£750 depending on the circumstances and I do that freely and willingly, especially after the fire.
Like almost everyone else, the RADBMX team were outstanding and they helped me as much as they possibly could during the weeks following. I’m eternally grateful.
Would you like to see something bigger happen with the event? ie more ramps more riders?
A year or maybe two before there was an official mid school tent there, I floated the idea of another marquee that would house a miniramp, non alcoholic drinks and a mid school display, the idea being that the growing older rider scene would actually have a reason to go to MK and they’d have something to do while they were there.
I barely drink and I can’t stand rave, house or dance music so the big Saturday night at MK has nothing to offer me and I know I’m not alone. The idea of another area where people could go, maybe play a few old videos in the evening and share even more stories seems appealing to me.
Hasn’t happened yet though and I doubt it will ever at this venue at least, space is limited already. That’s what I’d like to see at MK though. Sounds like fun right?
What do you miss about the BMX scene of times gone by?
I miss nothing about the 80s apart from the freshness of it all in the early days. The money, politics and egos ruined it, just like it always does. I have fonder memories of the late 80s when I was playing street hockey actually.
I miss the camaraderie of the 90s, the fact that you went to any skatepark anywhere at one point and you were guaranteed to know someone there. Anyone wearing Vans was a brother pretty much. I miss the gnarliness of the 90s, we wore all those pads and we needed every one of them haha. Not me so much as I ran out of talent in the 90s, but BMX back then was fucking heroic; In my eyes, you had bull riding, motocross and BMX and if you did any of them you were a special breed. The challenge, the pain & injuries and the fear couldn’t fail to set you aside from the masses.
A lot of that seems to have gone away as the equipment evolved – both bikes and ramps – and this generation of riders grew up on resi ramps and foam pits. I won’t say anything against this generation, the riding is outstanding and the speed of progression is mind blowing but it IS different. But then I suppose it should be; nothing stays the same forever.
What’s next for you?
I’ve got a few things going on. I’ve been trying to slow the business down for the past 2 years or more but as previously mentioned, things happen and you have to deal with them.
That’s still the plan though, scale the firm back to a point where I can try and recover physically and mentally from several bloody hard years. I have some plans to diversify and make better use of my new premises too and if all that goes ok, I’ll have ramps built in there ready for next winter.
This year 2020 is the year I drop some weight and try to get back into some sort of riding shape – I’m woefully out of condition and 60 isn’t that far away now! I am back on my bike though, which is a step in the right direction.
Last words?
Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity, Thank you all for reminding me that our community is alive and strong. Well done to you Neil and the Ride On gang, you’ve built something really cool here and props to you for stepping up and doing it.
Support rider owned bike shops and companies.
Hopefully I’ll see some of you on a deck somewhere soon. I might only be repairing it, but I’ll be there!