Cape Town legend Melissa Williams, aka Suzy Snakes, released her video part “Luna” with Dolores a while back. Supported by Vans in South Africa, this video was filmed across France, Spain, Ghana, Mozambique and South Africa. That pretty much sums up Melissa: you can find her anywhere around the world, shredding with a smile on her face. We got to ask her all about her part and much more, in this interview that came out on Dolores Magazine #10.
Interview by Letícia Nogueira
Photos by Leon Bester and David Shiffman
What’s up, Mel? What have you been up to these days?
Heyo! I just got back from Dubai where I was coaching Boipelo Awuah, she’s a street skateboarder from Kimberley in South Africa and making her way through the Olympic qualification events. Now that I’m back home it’s been band practices to get ready for our upcoming shows, organising some skate events and lots of walks with my dog Rosa.
Why Suzy Snakes?
Good question, it’s the result of a bunch of silly ideas and funny jokes with friends. But mainly I think it’s just fun to have an alter-ego in a way, especially on a public platform like Instagram. Indirectly it’s kind of fitting though, cause we have tons of super poisonous snakes in South Africa!
Your life seems well exciting, always travelling and skating - how do you manage to do it?
Somehow I’ve managed to get extremely lucky over the last couple of years with some amazing projects that’s allowed me to travel with skating. Many of the recent trips have been projects with World Skate, coaching Boipelo at the contests. For work I run social media accounts and organise events, so that makes it possible for me to carry on with my work while I’m travelling. I love being on the road, even though it has its challenges. I also have a very supportive family back home that makes it possible to keep it all balanced out.
Endless slappy boardslide of every skater's dreams.
How old were you when you started skating and how was the skate scene in South Africa back then? Were there any other girls skating?
I started skating when I was around 11 or 12 years old and right now I’m 38. When I started skating I was the only girl that I knew of. I heard of other girls who skate here and there and over the years met a few from other cities. It’s super interesting to look back because those were the days before Instagram, so maybe there were lots of girls skating but we had no way to know about each other. For a really long time I didn’t see any at the local skate parks or on the street missions in Cape Town though. In general the skate scene in South Africa has always been really strong actually, even though we’re quite far away from the rest of the world, the country has all these international connections which I think made it possible to have a good scene.
How have you seen the non-trad skate scene change?
It’s changed massively, now there is a huge, thriving female skate scene all over the country. It’s really great! There are quite a few community organisations now like Girls Skate South Africa, Island Gals, You Go Girl and I do Skate Smiles Club, all creating safe, supportive communities for girls to skate together or learn how to skate. There are also women’s divisions in comps now and brands sponsoring women too. It’s still growing a lot, and there are still some issues that come up of course, but it seems like everyone’s having a ton of fun skating and that’s the most important thing I think.
"It’s really important to have a safe space where people can learn and express themselves."
Bluntslide in this mythical Barcelona spot.
For sure. Can you tell us more about how you’ve been involved in it throughout this time?
Over the years I’ve always been involved with skate brands and doing events and stuff but about 5 or 6 years ago I started doing a monthly skate night for women. With the support of Vans we’ve been able to have a free skate night at The Shred skatepark with boards to use and coaches to help learn. I think community events like this help a lot to create a movement and connections between people. It’s really important to have a safe space where people can learn, not be afraid to fall and embarrass themselves and just to have fun and express themselves. Last year I started an annual women’s skate contest called Shredzilla, which we’ll run on South African Women’s Day on 9 August every year. This is our first women-only contest in South Africa and I think it’s also a really important event for the community. It’s fun to get together with all your friends and skate in an environment that is fun and supportive. I do these events and other projects under the name “Skate Smiles Club” along with a team of amazing people, you can find us on Instagram if you’re interested in having a look, @skatesmilesclub.
Your part “Luna” just came out on our website and it’s sick! Tell me the story behind the hippy jump through the hole in the wall, the second-last trick on the video?
While filming for the part, it was super challenging to find interesting spots in my hometown but driving around one day, I saw a hole in a wall that you could jump over with a little drop on the other side. I was so hyped, I couldn’t wait to skate it. But then it was actually incredibly challenging to skate ‘cause the hole is so small, the width is almost exactly the width of my board and then the nose and the tail kept hitting the edges - so I went home and chopped them off. A board is actually super hard to skate without a nose and tail, just because there is such little space for your feet and for landing and hard to turn and control too. It was a really tricky spot because the landing is also super crusty and it goes right into a super busy road. It was an amazing feeling when I finally landed it.
"It feels really good to push myself and continue learning. I think that’s the beauty of skateboarding, its endless progression and self-expression."
Melissa chopped her board's nose and tail for this special hippie jump through the hole.
What about the song?
Finding a song is always hard because of the music rights stuff. I play drums in a band called Black Lung and one day we were working on a new song and I just clicked that it would be the perfect song for a skate video. So we actually re-wrote and adapted it to work for Luna and went in to record it specially for the video. It was really such a cool and unique process and so cool from a creative perspective to have our music integrate with the skating. The rest of the guys in the band also skate and we’ve been playing in the band together for over 12 years, they came on a lot of the skate missions while I was filming and Justus Kotze, the bassist, has a clip in the video too. So it was just a really special sort of collaboration and I’m super excited that it all worked out so well.
What does it mean to you, to have a video part come out at this stage in life, and still be out there shredding after so many years?
I’m super happy that I got the chance to make this project happen. Just like recording an album with a band, it’s really cool to get the chance to document a part of your life and create something that you can look back on. It feels really good to push myself and continue learning. I think that’s the beauty of skateboarding, its endless progression and self-expression. I think the more you film, the more you figure out about yourself and your style of skating. Making a video is an amazing creative challenge. I hope it gets people hyped to go out and skate and have fun with their friends!