Thrasher Magazine

Photos by Bryce Golder

Ben Lawrie was one of the first people I met when I started coming into the city to skate. I was 12 and Ben 15. It was one of my first times at Lincoln Square, the plaza at the top end of Melbourne’s central business district that we both grew up at. The plaza that is no longer what it once was after a remodel made it unskateable. But it is immortalized as Ben’s Instagram moniker. At the time, he was a long-haired skate rat, wearing second-hand shoes that were basically falling off his feet. I try not to use the term “skate rat,” but I can’t think of a more accurate way to describe 15-year-old Ben, the one nicknamed “Lincoln Child.” His long, ratty blonde hair flowed out of his red trucker hat while he would blow everyone’s minds with his long slappies and nonstop skating from 9AM ‘til the sun went down. We all knew he was going to go somewhere with skateboarding; he was obsessed and learning tricks so quickly, all while living off a diet of iced coffee and chili-flavored chips.

Since then, he’s come into his own, found new spots to obsess over, cut his hair, worked out how to hold grinds and slides even longer and to pop out even further. He even quit skateboarding for a year, but came back to it better than ever. He has unlocked so many new spots around the city and skated Melbourne in a way that is so unique that he influenced the entire city with that long-grind-and-pop-out game.

Recently, he’s had some big moves like being welcomed to Melbourne’s own Hoddle Skateboards with an incredible short clip by Geoff Campbell and with the release of Geoff’s second Internet Birthday video, the long-awaited sequel to his first video of the series that was released in late 2022. A lot has changed in Ben’s life as of late, so I sat down with him to talk about it all. —Josh Sabini


From Boserio's bold opening to Ben's showstopping tailslide, Geoff Campbell's newest vid will properly stoke your next session    

Your Instagram has been @lincoln_square for years now. For those that don’t know, what is the significance behind the name?
Lincoln Square is where I skated every day when I was younger. Heaps of people around the time I made it @lincoln_square had random things as their Instagram names, like @katsudon which is a meal from a Japanese place in the city. At the time, no one knew my name because I was a sixteen-year-old kid who didn’t talk to anyone, people just started calling me Lincoln Child and it’s stuck now to where people are still calling me LC.

Using that Lincoln-Square-honed pinch for a 100-kilometer switch front crook fakie flip out

What was Lincoln Square like?
It was the best place to skate ever. There was basically every obstacle you’d want to skate, there were all these low curbs and planters, heaps of different sizes of stairs and out ledges, as well as a really good crew of people that would hang out there. You can see in the way that I do some tricks that I learned them on curbs. The way I do a back tail, I don’t even pop my tail properly; I scoop my way onto the ledge. I can’t even do an ollie properly. A lot of the way I skate is because of Lincoln Square, learning to do slappies on the little planter rails around the trees and wanting to hold the grinds on the whole thing. I learned how to hold a slappy crook before I even knew how to ollie into a crook. I learned front crooks by learning slappy ones first.

What was it like growing up there?
It was amazing. I got to where I am now because of growing up there. It’s where I met Geoff Campbell and where we started filming together. Eventually, we started filming a part for The Skateboarder's Journal and that led to me getting on Nike. He became the team manager, and I was the first person he put on. It's dope that there was a place to skate that wasn’t a skatepark where you could go skate and make friends—there really isn’t anywhere like that now in the city.

Boardslide flat and out over the summer Christmas lights 

Yeah, there really isn’t. Something that people who have ever watched your footage would’ve noticed is you are a return visitor to spots. What is it about skating a spot until you’re super comfortable with it that appeals to you?
A lot of the time when I skate spots in the first place, I settle for tricks that are building blocks for the tricks I actually want to do, and I have my eyes set on something that might be really far away from what I am doing but I am making my way up to it. Skating the same spot, you can get a feel for it in a way you can’t with other things. Every time I skate there, I am getting an understanding of every single crack in the ground, how the ledge is going to slide, what temperature is the best for it and how fast the wind needs to be going.

In the last five years, you and Geoff have made more spots skateable than anyone else in Melbourne. Where did the making spots thing come from?
The lack of spots in the city and skating at Lincoln all the ledges there would be capped. I think I just uncapped the one normal-sized ledge there. I also definitely uncapped a lot of the ledges at Lincoln so the older people would be stoked on me too. Not in some weird sort of way, I just wanted everyone to have something else to skate there. A lot of the time people just hang out there and didn’t skate. I wanted to get everyone hyped on skating the spot, so I wanted to make everything skateable.




You’ve made so much work with what we’ve got in the city. Do you think that Melbourne is the city that compliments your skating best?
Yeah, I’d only want to live here, and I always want to film the majority of my stuff here. If I was to go try film shit overseas, I would want to try to go somewhere and stay there for a month or so and have a solid place to stay at so I could get into my own rhythm.




You took all of 2022 away from skating, not touching your board at all that whole year. What led you to the point that you wanted to take time away from it?
I don’t think I ever decided that I was going to take a break. It was more that I wasn’t having fun skating and I got a really bad heel bruise which made me not want to skate. I put so much pressure on myself, having these expectations of myself that were way too high. It was making me bummed because I couldn’t progress how I wanted to. I just wasn’t having fun skating either, and that is the most important thing. At first, I wanted to have a bit of a break and I was stoked on cycling, building bikes and trying to ride as far as I could. Then after a month, I had no desire to go skating. Definitely after that, I wanted to go skate again, but I didn’t want to be shit in front of people and have the conversations about why I stopped skating and stopped talking to all my friends who skate. I regret not talking to people and blowing a lot of people off, but that came from physically not being able to do it. I couldn’t handle being asked the questions. I never wanted to stop hanging out with my friends. I always wished I could without anyone ever saying anything about me not skating. Even though, of course, that wouldn't even be rude or wrong on their behalf. It's just a normal thing to talk about. I just couldn't handle it.

Was it hard distancing yourself from your friends while they were all skating?
Yeah, it was weird. Because it felt like I was dodging a lot of my friends and they felt like I was doing that too. That was the part of not skating that sucked. I just couldn’t interact with skaters for a while. That was part of why I wasn’t skating; I was trying to figure out how to not be a skater, because my whole life from 12 to 24 was literally only skating. It was only going skating, only talking about skating, only going to parties where I would talk about skating. I was trying to distance myself from that. I couldn’t deal with people asking me about why I wasn’t skating. I just didn’t want to address it at all. I just wanted to skip it, which isn’t something that you should do. But it is easy to do, to avoid the problems you have to face.

Did you feel like you had an identity crisis in a way?
Yeah, it was a bit of an identity crisis. I didn’t want to only be a skater. I wanted to be able to figure out how to be a person as well as a skater. I didn’t talk to anyone who didn’t skate until I met my ex-girlfriend and started hanging out with her friends. I obsessed over skating—all I did for 12 years was skate. It was good to figure out how to not just do that and balance out my life more so I can enjoy skating more.

After that year away what made you get back into it?
I’d been wanting to start skating again for three months before I did. It just took me realizing that other people’s ideas of me didn’t matter. I was too nervous about people’s expectations of me and the level I’d be skating at.


Do you feel like you have a healthier relationship with skateboarding after the break?
Yeah, definitely. I can just have fun skating and film things when I feel like it.

In the few months you’ve had some big revelations with your life—getting diagnosed with autism and ADHD. I know that’s had a big impact on you and your outlook on everything. Did you want to talk a bit about it?
Yeah, at the start of the year I went to the doctor to get anti-anxiety medication, because I was feeling anxious at work and it was becoming too much. I was explaining to the doctor what was making me anxious and how I was feeling, and she said, “Ben, I think you’re autistic.” That was the start of making lots of discoveries. From there she referred me to a psychologist. I started seeing him to start working through the way autism impacts me, how to integrate better and understanding my brain is different and being okay with that.

You’ve been taking medication for your ADHD too. Have you found that to be beneficial?
Yeah, especially on trips. I’ve always struggled skating on trips because I have no routine. I’ve woken up when everyone else had woken up. I have no time to myself and it has been super overwhelming to me on trips. So I end up drinking a lot of alcohol or smoking a lot of weed. I’m able to have fun but I can’t skate because I feel like I need to drink and have these substances just so I can feel comfortable enough not to have a breakdown. Now, I can just focus on skating while I’m on a skate trip and it feels amazing. It isn’t just the medication though, seeing my psychologist has helped me so much. Thanks to him I’ve been able to navigate the world so much more comfortably.

Back on it, Ben closes out the second Internet Birthday with a switch back tail biggie for the ages

Do you feel like you don’t need to drink as much now?
Yeah, I don’t have the urge at all, when normally I would have. Everyone will be drinking; I’ll be offered beers and I don’t feel the need to anymore. Before, I would be drinking every day and I would only not drink them because I thought it was cooked to be drinking so many beers.

Have you found that getting the diagnosis helped you understand yourself a bit better?
Yeah, I wish I found out earlier. I did always have an idea, but I didn’t think knowing would be beneficial. If I didn’t look into it, I wouldn’t have found out I had ADHD and I could have this medication that makes me feel so much more comfortable navigating through the world. If you think you have something, it is important to learn about it so you can understand how it affects your behavior. You can let yourself go off a bunch of things if you understand why you did them. I’m not saying it is the be all and end all, taking medication, because it doesn’t work for everyone, but it is definitely worth trying out. There are things I have done in my life that I regret, an example is like I never told my parents that I loved them until I was 21 when my granddad died. I just really struggled to always show those emotions. Now knowing I’m autistic, that’s why I couldn’t do it because it was such a big deal. I couldn’t handle it at all.

Beers are cool sometimes, but switch crooks to regular on this metal trap is cool always    

It’s so nice to hear about how much it’s helped. I think that stuff can be so beneficial.
Oh, for sure. It really is.

You were on flow for Polar for six years. You’ve now landed a spot on Hoddle. How did that move end up happening?
I always wanted to skate for Hoddle. When Geoff told me I was getting a surprise package from a board company after I was on Element, I was hoping it was going to be Hoddle. It ended up being Polar and I was obviously so stoked, but a part of me hoped it was going to be Hoddle. Now, it is Hoddle. I couldn’t be more stoked to be skating for a company that is run by my friends, with some of my best friends on the team—people I’ve known since they were 12 and even younger. It is cool to skate for a company where it is your actual friends, I feel like that’s what all your favorite companies are.

I’m hyped for you. I think it makes so much sense. Before we wrapped this up earlier you said when you weren’t skating you would try to ride your bike as far as possible. How far would you go?
My goal was to ride 100 kilometers in three hours. The biggest ride I did was around 98 kilometers in three hours, but my legs completely stopped working and I got stranded because I couldn’t move. I was on the bike path along the river and the only way of getting out was going up a set of stairs. I couldn’t go up the stairs, so I was just stuck at the bottom of the stairs sitting on the ground with all my muscles cramping waiting it out. I couldn’t get an Uber either because I had to get up the stairs.

Holy shit. How long did you have to wait?
It was probably about 30 minutes. Then even after that, it was so hard to get up the stairs because I had cycling shoes on, and you can hardly walk in those. I couldn’t even get on my bike at all, so I had to waddle over to the train station.

Well, we're glad you made it back.

Far from the perfect ledges he grew up on, Ben still brings his plaza-honed technique to the roughest spots he can find. Crooked grind into some Kiwi crust