James Edson’s dreams are clearer in black and white. He can imagine, with an uncanny clarity, 25 years of life. Any one privy to Palace Wayward Boys Choir would share the same sentiment. For it was this group of British skate pioneers who dreamt up a scene so defiantly pure that it could only be recalled. Living in a shared house in London’s south, Edson and co-conspirators, Levent Tanju, Daniel ‘Snowy’ Kinloch, Stuart Hammond, Gareth Skewis, Blondey McCoy and Lucien Clarke (to list a few), imagined a boundary between America’s shiny aspirations and Britain’s countercultures. They wanted to introduce a new grimier breed of skateboarding that would bridge the gap between high-budget skate parts and extreme sports. This bridge, built within the walls and floors of their home, ‘Waterloo Palace’, fuelled their subversive lifestyle. It allowed each of them to pave a new untethered path, where a zanier skateboarding culture could thrive. 

Why wouldn’t the Palace Wayward Boys Choir want to return to that time in history? Taste defeat’s sweat and hear victory’s cheer once again? Why wouldn’t they re‑open the floodgates and let the memories furiously stream in? Through Edson’s debut monograph, they can. Titled, Rabbit Hole, the 75-page book reminisces what Rodney Mullen might consider the “dustier” days: the times when smoke was consistently blown, lines racked, booze drunk, agony expected and ecstasy frequently felt. Each page cases a monochrome photo, taken with an analogue or disposable camera. Though all the images are black and white, their spirit is colourful, with their scratches and grain specks underpinning nothing but age. 

Traversing this whirlwind of history, readers are expected to fall, like Alice, back into London’s gritty 2000s core. Even as I sit here scanning the digital pages, my head revolves, tracking the days and nights of Edson’s life. My eyes twirl, grinning as his greatest memories of beady-eyed drolls, Marge Simpson costumes, watchful pit bulls, Bombay cats, crucifixes, cityscapes, mountain ranges, dilated pupils, butts and babes appear. It feels intimate, like a time capsule complete with glee and joy. In the precede, Stuart Hammond explains that the spinning is intentional. The spreads deliberately rotate by 45 degrees so when properly viewed, “the book will have its reader slowly revolving … whirling the book methodically around and around in front of their face with an absurd determination.” The outcome is magical, almost hallucinatory. 

Rabbit Hole is created in partnership with independent press MPK Studio, located in Melbourne’s north. The book is accompanied by a selection of Palace T-shirts and blankets.