6.5.07 10 QUESTIONS WITH JOHN RATTRAY
1. What is your full name? Mr John R. A. Rattray
2. I know you’re from Scotland. What part of Scotland are you from, and how was it growing up skating there? I grew up in Aberdeen, in the north east of Scotland. Skating there is a fairly harsh affair. Plenty rain, cold and buckled paving slabs. There was an indoor park for a short time in Aberdeen when I fist started and a renegade indoor park or two an hour south in Dundee. At that point Dundee had abandoned buildings that the locals there were motivated enough to take advantage of. The north east of Scotland is reasonably remote. It was a pretty amazing scene.
3. Recently you got 8th in the Tampa Pro Contest. Did you enter a lot of contests in the UK when you were growing up? Not that many.
4. How do you feel about this day and age of skateboarding? It’s pretty wild. Generally I think it’s fantastic or I wouldn’t be bothering.
5. Now that you’re residing in sunny Southern California, what are the pros and cons of living down here? Do you feel like it benefits you as a skater more or less then living in the UK? Well, to a certain extent weather is a matter of the clothes you’re wearing. Skating is globalizing like any other business. The only way up is what the number crunchers are forced into instinctively believing. Fight to survive, dog eats dog in a never ending struggle of handshakes and marketing strategies. Whether geographical location makes any difference to the average skater, possibly. Best thing to do- learn a new move or improve on an old one and enjoy it like you always did. I think that regardless of past choices we are constrained to make the best of the situation we find ourselves in at any given moment. All I know is that I’m having a great time doing what I’m doing with the people I’m doing it with- most of the time.
6. You’ve always have had such a diverse bag of tricks from tech ledge lines to 540’s on Vert. Do you think it matters in this day in age to be Versatile and able to skate everything, or do you think the straight “going for it” method is the way to get it done? I think everyone should just live. Just live. Skate what you want how you want to. That’s the reason we skate isn’t it?
7. Did you grow up skating a local park around your house in Scotland? If so, which one was it and has it helped to make the skater that you are today? Westburn park had a fiberglass mini ramp and a really bad undercover kerb which curved the wrong way. That’s the spot.
8. I remember watching your part in the Blueprint Video “Waiting for the World” and thinking that you were a part of a company that was crossing the European and American boundaries. Are you good friends all of those guys still, and what’s the difference between skating for an American company compared to Blueprint? Still friends. The difference is in the accents and the TV programs people remember from their childhoods. Aside from that people are more or less the same.
9. Who do you think would win in a fight, Sir William Wallace from Brave Heart or Stu Graham? That situation couldn’t happen what with Stewart’s commitment to pacifism. If it did, Stewart might win by blowing Wallace a little kiss thus incapacitating the great man with uncontrollable laughter. That’s my best guess.
10. If you had to choose one quote from a movie, what would it be? We’re all in this together kid.
