SKATEBOARDING:With up to 20 million practitioners worldwide, skateboarding remains seriously hot. Richard Gilliganexplains why he's addicted
THERE IS A SCENE in Robert Zemeckis's classic time-travel adventure Back To The Future that's forever etched in the memory of anyone who was a child in the 1980s. Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) is being pursued through 1950s Hill Valley by his nemesis Biff Tannen and assorted cohorts. To assist in his escape, he improvises a makeshift skateboard from a child's scooter.
When the spectacular chase sequence that ensues is finally completed, Biff and his cronies are covered in horse manure, Marty has ruptured the space-time continuum, and skateboarding has captured the imagination of a generation of young cinema-goers as never before.
"Back To The Future is the reason I started skating," admits Richard Gilligan (27). "As a kid, I completely modelled myself on Marty McFly." By his late teens, he reckons, he knew the surface texture of every side street and back alley in his native Dublin.
Unfortunately for Gilligan and others like him, skateboarding in Ireland at the time revolved around leaky warehouses, improvised wooden ramps and cat and mouse games with irate security guards. That situation changed for the better about two years ago, when the Government and local authorities finally allocated money for the construction of skate parks.
It's a blustery Monday evening, but when we arrive, there are already about 10 skateboarders and BMXers gathered in Bushy Park Skate Bowl. ("I actually moved to Australia for a year when I was 18," marvels Gilligan, "just so I could skate in places like this.") John Heery is a 37-year-old local skateboarder who campaigned for the construction of this facility for more than a decade and a half.
One of the campaign's most treasured early souvenirs, he tells me, is a letter from George Redmond declining Corporation assistance on the grounds that there were no funds available. In the end, he believes, the fact that the son of a Government minister was an enthusiastic skateboarder may actually have won the day for them.
The facility in Bushy Park opened in 2006 at a cost of more than €250,000. For Heery, the value for money for that outlay is obvious: it takes skateboarding out of warehouses and public plazas. It also provides teenagers who, by their own admission, would be candidates for juvenile delinquency, with an outlet for something that's healthy and relatively safe.
Gilligan certainly believes that, growing up, the hobby helped keep him on the straight and narrow. "I've had lots of friends who skated for a while but dropped out when girls or drink came on the scene," he says. "But all I've ever wanted to do is skate. It keeps me sane to be able to zone out and forget about everything else that's going on for a while."
In fact, skateboarding also inadvertently set Gilligan upon his present career path. As a teenager, he was obsessed with skate magazines such as Thrasher and Rad. "I only discovered photography through looking at the pictures in those mags," he says. "For years, I was obsessed with the pictures and thought how cool it would be to do something like that myself." Today Gilligan is an in-demand photographer, whose work has been published in Britain, the US and Australia.
So what changes has he witnessed in his year observing the skating scene in Ireland? "When I started, you didn't have to be the best. You were just doing it because you got a kick out of it." That mindset has changed, he believes, with younger skaters now more focused on getting their names out there and getting sponsorship.
"There's a young guy from Belfast called Conhuir Lynn who has been in all the American magazines. Wherever you go in the world, skaters will ask if you know him. So lads of 16 or 17 now see that and think, 'Well, there's no reason why I can't do that too'. The new generation coming up are brilliant - much better than we ever were!"
A selection of Richard Gilligan's skate photography is available to view at www.richgilligan.com