Burleigh Brewing Co are celebrating beer and skateboarding with an exhibition curated by former pro skateboarder and co-owner of Precinct Skate Shop, Trent Bonham.
Trent turned pro for Omni Skateboards in 1996 and skated for Boom and Time throughout the ’90s. Over the years, he has amassed an incredible collection of original, rare and un-skated boards. A selection from Trent’s huge collection will be on display for the next month as part of Burleigh Brewing Co’s Taphouse Artist In Residence program. Trent explained that he began collecting boards around 1999 after stumbling upon a rare Alphonzo Rawls H-Street board in a skate shop in Melbourne.
Article by Nat Kassel. Photos by Troy Archer.
“I saw that board in a skate shop and because it was already such an old board, I wondered what else was out there,” says Trent. “Then when we’d go on skate trips or tours, I’d go to skate shops and be like, ‘What have you got in the back? What dead stock do you have?’ We weren’t buying them for value, we were just buying them for stoke. This was pre-eBay and pre-social media, so there was no value gauge. It was purely for the stoke of seeing these things again.”
Collecting can get pretty addictive and it wasn’t long before Trent had more boards than he had space for.
“There was a point where I had 150 boards on my walls and close to 200 in boxes. There were times where I was spending $1000 on a deck and it was going straight into a box, not even going on a wall. It was just accumulation, not appreciation,” he says. “It’s never been about making money, but I’d amassed such a sizeable collection that I had to decide what genre I was going to focus on. I decided I’d collect early ’90s stuff – specifically from 1990 to ’93. Then I had to start selling off my other stuff, otherwise, it was just going to get out of hand.”
At one point in the early 2000s, Trent was heading to California every six months to dig around for rare boards, funding his travels by buying and selling the boards. Having an eye for what was rare and valuable, along with good exchange rates at the time, it was a good gig.
Trent’s collection is strictly made up of mint condition, original boards that have never been skated. He doesn’t collect re-issues or used boards, preferring a cleaner look on the walls. In terms of favourites, Trent says he’s most stoked on a Blind Jason Lee pro model with a David Bowie graphic, a World Industries Jeremy Klein pro model and a super rare World Industries Steve Rocco test print.
Trent says, “There are pieces from every era in my collection, but the main focus is early ’90s. I’ve tried to include boards from all generations. Younger kids won’t be able to appreciate some of the names on the older boards, but hopefully, there’s something there for all ages.”
Trent Bonham’s Artist In Residence exhibition is open now and will be running until the Burleigh Keg Jump kicks off on June 24.
TAPHOUSE HOURS:
FRIDAY: 3pm-8pm
SATURDAY: 12pm-7pm
SUNDAY: 12pm-4pm
