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Future legend Mr Crilley Jnr interviewed! Mr BFC and all round top geezer Mr. Crease Willy (soz!) takes 5 minutes out of his crazy schedule to answer some questions about wheelieboarding, rails, jam, parents and unicorns :) Hi Rhys! You’ve had a long involvement in the heart of mountainboarding, but how and when did you first start? With which other crews have you ridden? I first tried mountainboarding at NASS 2001 and watched the noSno guys and a very small Joe Dickson hitting dirt jumps and doing 3s, there was a real cool vibe but it took me until 2003 to buy a board and start riding regularly and competing! I started riding with team north up at Another World mountainboard centre and since then have managed to ride with loads of awesome people all across the UK and Europe. How have you seen it change over that time and what do you think of the change? Yeah its been great watching mountainboarding develop, the standard of riding has taken huge leaps forward and the kit being made by companies like MBS is constantly evolving and getting better. There seems to be a load more rider run centres, media crews and companies about nowadays which is good, there’s a lot of people involved simply because they love it. Everything seems to be growing in a healthy direction not like boom and bust. Mountainboarding’s been around for a while but I think only recently, like in the past few years has the standard of riding, the equipment, the centres and the events got to a level which will cope and handle the sport getting bigger. Theres so many good riders throwing down now and hopefully the wider world will start to see mountainboarding as a serious action sport with riders doing 7s and 9s, switch inverts and showing mad rail skills. yeah boy.. Where do you see the sport heading? Hopefully it’ll keep developing healthily with more new brands starting out as well as outside brands sponsoring events and riders, I doubt that the sports going to get insanely massive anytime soon with the economic climate as it is but fingers crossed over time the sport will get bigger and hopefully retain the great community atmosphere with more riders making a living from mountainboarding. Yeah I’ve been lucky when it comes to sponsors and have been fortunate enough to have been helped out by some great people. Its weird now I think about my involvement with mountainboard media, I rode and wrote for atbmag but I lived near and rode with the whole scuz team and after atbmag went under I became more involved with scuz and mountainboard mag. Andy, Welly and Chris were awesome inspiration with their DIY attitude and I think that without their support and advice the BFC wouldn’t be what it is today! Yarp, big props to ATBmag + Scuz/MM... Rem wouldn't be here either without them! Any tips for someone wanting to get involved in writing about mountainboarding? Just get out there, mountainboard and write about it! Read other writers work from snow/skate/surf mags and check out some more famous writers like Bill Bryson, writing with a sense of humour and your own style is important and always be positive about what you’re writing about! Writing that has a negative and cynical attitude sucks. How have you found the experience of joining the MBS team and the opportunity to go to demos with them, often being the emcee too... Its awesome being part of a team that pushes mountainboarding. When I rode for scrub it sucked as there was no sense of belonging to a team, no team meet ups or anything like that. Its totally different with MBS, there’s always stuff going on and its great to ride with the rest of the guys up at Bugs Boarding testing new stuff and messing about! The demo ramp events are always good fun, I get to shout about mountainboarding in front of huge crowds whilst the team put on a display of the best mountainboarding in the world! Yeah and you're good on the mic too, especially when in combo with Slater.. (photo: White Air 09) With all that, and being an active member of the BFC, and having mean photographer Crillpix, aka your dad, shooting you regulary, you are possibly one of the most media present riders! how do you find the attention? Ha ha I don’t think there’s that much attention! Its just fun having some amazing photos and great videos to look back on and remember how much fun life is! What's it really like having your ol' man snapping away nearly every time you ride? It's great, he gets loads of quality mountainboarding photos and we have fun! He’s well into his photography and always has some random ideas, inspiration and technique, sometimes I’m pretty sceptical and harsh but he always gets some epic shots! At home there’s pictures of mountainboarding all over the place stuck on walls and on the mantlepiece. Sweet.. (Here's some of proud Papa Crilley's shots of Rhys ripping it at Cream Teas, Bugs 09...) You’re possibly best known for your integral role in forming and the running of the BFC, how & why did it all come about? Filmogenic rocked, it brought 'young upstarts' the BFC to the fore of the UK scene... Do you want to divulge the truth of what 'BFC' stands for to the masses? Errrrrrrrrrr… no! haha BFC stands for whatever you want it to stand for! Was it kind of a reaction against all the crazy acronyms around a few years ago? Not really but we did come up with the initials before we came up with the words! I guess BFC is the new LOL! You've also been on a lot of road trips, which stick out in your mind? All of them! BFC trips are always pretty jokes, lots of fun and silly stuff going down, the last few years travelling around Europe was ace, you’ll have to check “We’ll Apologise Later” to find out what went down! The Terfware trip in 2005 was pretty awesome even though we broke down before we got to any real mountains, 24 hours in an airport playing ping pong and sleeping in deck chairs was fun but I’m sure shredding some alpine tracks would have been a little bit better, It was still memorable though. Hell yeah, Terfware meeting up with Team Exit (as was) at Wanyi Park?! good times... ;) what is the secret of the perfect road trip? Good friends, mountainboards, sweet spots, a camera, good vibes and sunshine. Oh and a trip to the local health spa or a swim in the local river is definitely compulsory! Definately. Any more open-road planned? Yeahhh! Summer is one big road trip for me, I tend to just travel from event to event and from centre to centre. Hopefully there’s going to be another euro trip this summer with Nicky Stirrups and Dylan from Oz, so hopefully we’ll get to cause some mischief around Europe again. It seems your very publicity-aware approach has been a key difference in setting you aside from previous DVDs, how important was it to the BFC making the DVD free? It Where can you see the BFC going in the future? Who knows! I never thought we’d be running an event series but hey here we are now running a European slopestyle series for the third year in a row! Were finally going to be making some more T-shirts this year and theres a few other things in the pipeline. Jack's finished university this year so he’s going to be getting a real job sometime soon so filming and DVDs might sit on the back burner for a while, we’ll still be filming stuff but releases might be a bit infrequent, its hard juggling BFC stuff with university and 2 jobs to pay the bills! (knows it...) I’m pretty sure we will just adapt with the times and keep it fresh by doing new and different things. Personally I’d quite like to make some mountainboard accessories, maybe bindings or something, they’d be all leopard print and neon colours, everyone would want a pair, ha ha! I only want them if they've got real leopard skin on lol. You spent your gap year doing a snowboard season followed by a summer living at Bugs Boarding, how did you find Believe. What made you decide to run a BFC event series? Who in the mountainboard world do you rate, riding-wise? Quite a big list then! I suppose anyone who’s having fun mountainboarding gets the thumbs up! Who else in the non-wheelieboard world do you rate?! Yeh bruv, & we can tell you like books, you can actually talk proper like :D Where in the world would you most like to ride? Brazil, Portugal, Japan, the US, Russia, New Zealand and Australia all look like they’ve got some amazing scenes and characters. I’ve always wanted to go in to space so I reckon a mountainboard trip to the moon is also in order. Totally in order; bust some moves at Echo Base then chill at the Sea of Tranquility... You seem to have ridden everywhere in Europe though.. Are there any spots which have been particular favourites? I wouldn’t say I’ve been everywhere, though I think I’ve been fortunate to see a fair few places in the UK and have managed to touch on Europe a little bit! Favourites for me have to be Wanyi Park in Belgium, Knockhill MBC and Bugs Boarding, whenever I go to any of these places I have an amazing time and the people there are great fun. What would a perfect days riding be in the world of Rhys Crilley? Id get to have a lie in and then about 11 o clock the BFC and all the cool fun mountainboarders from around the world would all go out for a few cheeky laps of the grass runs at Bugs, then teleport to Winterberg to shred the boardercross and jumps, then onwards into the alps for some long cruisy runs with some great scenery. A quick spot of lunch and an afternoon beer at Wanyi (with a few runs of course!) and then down to Knockhill for a bit of evening jib action followed by a floodlit ride on a lovely set of jumps somewhere. A nice big campfire with some beers and a camp out under the stars in the middle of nowhere would be lovely. Just working as a rep for them at Uni, where i'm also organising snowboard stuff too.. its good fun and hopefully Monster will get more involved with mountainboarding. They’re supporting Cream Teas and Jam again this year which is awesome. Lastly, final word and props and stuff? Thanks to anyone who’s ever had to put up with me, everyone who’s floor I’ve slept on and of course anyone who I’ve ever had the pleasure of riding with! AJ and Tom at MBS for hooking me up, The BFC for some epic times, Bugs and Nina for looking after me all summer on my gap year, all the sponsors of the BFC DVDS, all the centres and sponsors who are supporting Cream Teas and Jam! and finally my Mum and Dad who have always encouraged me and given me the opportunity to keep on shredding around having fun! Oh and hope you all enjoy "we'll apologise later" x Metal or plastic? Wood. Red or blue tyres? Neon Green with electric blue and electric pink splashes. How many pairs of shoes do you own? Just one pair of magic glittery red slippers. Beer or cider? Beers. How big would a mountain board have to be to be the first ever mountain board bus? Bigger than this. Have you ever been to Awesomeness? Everyday! Who'd win: zombies or giant spiders? Zombies, seriously I constantly live in fear of a zombie apocalypse. What do you do on a Thursday? The same as we do every night. Try to take over the world. Vegemite? but a tin can. Do you like unicorns? yes. And rainbows. What should we look out for? Next year's World Sweetcase Championships and the new BFC website xx Any good places to eat round here? Yeah I’ve got some coco pops and some milk in the fridge if you fancy it? Thanks mate. Love you Keep it steezy :) |
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