Ross is somebody I’ve known of for years, as a talented desinger and one of the key players in the DIY BMX company scene that boomed out of Leeds a few short years ago. I’ve personally never met Ross, but my good friend Rob Loeber however know’s him a lot better, and they ride BMX together in London. So rather than I do an introduction to somebody I’ve never met, I’ll let Rob do the talking.
“Who is Ross Teperek? A northern giant with a white rose for a passport, a heartbreaker under the name of “Dr. Feelbad” behind the decks, a flatland wizard, Google Earth’s biggest fan or an exceptional picture technician behind the artwork of bmx’s most aesthetically pleasing brands. If you ticked “All of the above” then you’re correct. We caught up with the “Dr.” to get an insight into some of his past projects and found out what else he’s been up to, down in London”.
Who is Ross Teperek?
A dude with a big face living in London searching for dreams
The first time I saw your work was as a young BMX nipper in Leeds. How did all the Revolt stuff come about, and how involved actually were you?
Well my good friend Paul Robinson and Greg started it in 2000, I think. I got a lot more involved in the design side of things in 2005(ish). Then I ended up paying for all the printing and things like that too. It was never meant to be a money thing just a family and a creative outlet. It just fizzled out really as we moved on to other stuff.
And that then led onto the Pariah stuff? What do you think was Pariah’s downfall?
Again it was more a project and creative outlet, the idea was to pool the resources of all the small struggling BMX companies and work as a co-operative …which it was totally successful at for the brief time it existed. My only involvement was the design side of things, I am no organizer ha. It was really good fun to work on actually, I totally tried to push myself to separate our style from any generic Bmx design at the time. People just moved on really, no big deal, just the usual politics.
Do you think the glory days of DIY jam’s, a la Lambrini jam, or over? Recent jams just don’t seem to be able to capture the same atmosphere.
It’s hard to say, I hope there will be a new generation stepping up. But I think the web makes people a bit lazy in many ways. Don’t get me wrong it brings people together virtually in ways that were never possible but there is less emphasis on the real gatherings. Kids, step it up yeah. We were lucky with the scene at the time in Leeds. Lots of close friends came together with ideas and ambition, just having fun.
Sticking with the Leeds theme for the time being, tell us about wrong eyed jesus. Were all those hate mail emails really genuine? For the record I loved it, and wished you’d continued to do it!
Haha yeah that was an awesome project. It was another collaboration between myself and Paul. We wanted to move away from Bmx and just have fun with everything else we liked ..talking shit, music, ideas etc. I wanted to experiment with editorial design, basing concepts around each article. Basically each article was designed to reflect the content along with an overall theme for the issue.
The emails were written, that makes them real…
So the natural step from that was Shut magazine yes? What’s going on with that?
Well Paul wanted to take WREJ to print and actually make some money from all the hours we put in, in order to get it to print it needed funding. In order to get funding it needed to be more ‘acceptable’ to monks, nuns, and priests. This was the birth of Shut. A free Leeds based music and style mag. It’s Paul’s baby really …I just came up with the branding etc for it and Paul took it more in the direction he wanted. I just help out with typography and random bits ‘n bobs here and there.
So you live in London now then? What made you move from Leeds?
Progression really, I get bored of things pretty easily so London seemed like it could keep me more occupied. I got offered a job in advertising down here with a mate so I thought why the hell not! Don’t get me wrong, Leeds is awesome but there is a whole world out there to discover too.
Do you DJ as well, as a sideline?
Ahh yeah i started doing it for all the Bmx jams Revolt/Pariah/Lambrini. I love metal but I was sick of listening to AC/DC and Slayer at every god damn event, so tried to force my own tastes on people! I play a bit here and there but nowhere near as much as I’d like to. I keep meaning to do some mixes to punt my ass about, but i never get round to it. Another thing on the list.
What’s with your obsession with google maps? I must admit, I harbor the same strange fascination, so I love your posts on Sticks and Stones.
Its weird I’ve always been obsessed with maps, we had loads of really interesting nature and atlases around my house growing up. I just don’t understand that people can’t be fascinated with the planet, they just live in their local bubbles as all this mad stuff is around them. I’m an over eager geek so I just want to explore. If I could fly around the world looking at stuff I would …this is the next best thing for now.
Any last Words?
There’s no success like failure.
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