The world is a strange place and when you don’t think you are going to meet ‘your people’, invariably you always do. I first met my good friend Mackey (founder of the Liverpool institution that is the skate shop, Lost Art) when I accompanied my friend, Joel, to Liverpool for him to have an audition at LIPA. He got a letter with a date and time and asked if I wanted to skive off college and go to Liverpool for the day. I obviously agreed because then I could see if this shop I’d heard about stocked these ‘new’ Nike SB trainers… you can tell how long ago this was!
My dear friend hadn’t read the acceptance letter carefully enough and it turned out that Joel had to prepare a five minute monologue for his audition. So we got off the train at Lime Street, ran to the Lord Street WHSmith (again, you can tell how long ago this was), picked up a copy of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and he started memorising a Shylock passage and banished me to “find something to do for a few hours as I am not entertaining you.”
I wandered around Liverpool until I found a sign for ‘Quiggins’ where I thought the shop was located, walked up and down stairs looking for a skate shop and then finally I found it, glass-fronted with a fella behind a counter looking at a box filled with what looked like Lacoste t-shirts. Now, dear reader, I had never been in a skate shop in my whole life and was a little intimidated, even though a couple of my close friends skated or at least dressed that way, but in the search of nice trainers, I will do anything.
I walked through the door and the bloke behind the counter said in a cheery voice, “Mate I love those trabs,” and that is where our love affair began. I was wearing a pair of re-issued Jordan Is, (which I later let my friend Emily borrow- she has massive feet- and she managed to lose them, not that I think about that every day…) and he knew exactly what they were and told me the history of skaters wearing them back in the day. I asked him about the SBs and I ended up buying three pairs because A) they were much cheaper back in the day B) It had just been my birthday and C) there was no way that I would ever be in Liverpool again (how wrong I was…) so I may as well stock up.
He then showed me some Lacoste crocodile t-shirts, but the traditional brand name had been replaced with ‘Lost Art.’ My new friend told me that all the Scousers at that time were wearing Lacoste tracksuits and that he had a skate competition to go to and he didn’t have anything for the team to wear, so he quickly came up with this. So I asked if I could buy one and he said yes*. I found out that this bloke’s name was Dave Mackey ‘everyone calls me Mackey’ and I shook his hand, paid up and walked out.
I ran back to Lord Street, met up with Joel, went to LIPA, he got a place on the course, we caught the train home and he asked me why I had bought ‘as many pairs of shoes as rappers would buy.’ I nodded and looked at my hemp (yes, I had a pair of those) dunks and thought to myself ‘I really like Liverpool.’
A year and a bit goes by, I am off to university in Manchester to do a fashion degree, I didn’t like it. So I did a French degree, I lasted 6 days and then I got told that a tutor that had taught me at secondary school wanted me to do a music and media course in Liverpool. She got me through the university door and I got in my dad’s van with all my worldly possessions and I was off to my favourite city in the world.
I won’t blab on for much longer about how the wonderful city of Liverpool and its inhabitants took care of me, taught me lots and gave me a whole new appreciation for life, but most of this is all down to Mackey. Through his kindness, generosity, knowledge and humour, I managed to adapt to living away from family, doing things on my own and not being embarrassed about not being able to skate. He introduced me to a whole community of people that took care of me and still check in to this day. He taught me about music, style, how to make a pot noodle when you have had knee surgery and not to take yourself too seriously.
A city and a fella that I owe everything to and that is why I am proud to announce the Lost Art x TRiCKETT t-shirt will be available on Saturday 11th January at 10AM at Lost Art’s shop on Brick Street in Liverpool. This also happens to coincide with Liverpool taking on the mighty Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup and to celebrate Mackey and I knowing each other for over 20 years.
I will see you there, la.
* I still have the original and I was really happy when I saw a few of the lads from ‘Dirty Sanchez’ wearing them back in the day.