JACK PATERSON

J-Pat is a skinny, pale 19-year-old from the north side of Sydney with a sincere laugh and a big tattoo of a scorpion on the side of his head. But depending on the day, he’s either the super chilled guy doing body varial tricks and bombing hills, or the dude punching himself in the face trying to get a line. Sometimes you can’t quite tell if he’s being straight up or subtly taking the piss out of you. He’s J-Pat, the enigma, but he wasn’t shy to talk about his first green whistle; the time he got arrested in SF; and his front feeble down the Suicide Towers rail. As far as I can tell, J-Pat is the sort of dude who gets himself into shit, then runs away laughing.

“I hated being constantly surrounded by this rich, fake world of people whose parents would buy them Audis for their 16th birthday.”

First up, I just want to apologise on behalf of Slam for spelling your name wrong when we ran your first photo. Can you set the record straight on the spelling?

[Laughs] Yeah, my last name is Paterson spelt with one T, but the first time I got a photo in Slam it was spelt with two T’s. When I told my mum she thought she’d email you guys just to get the record straight. I think it was Cam Markin’s mistake, though, he’s an idiot [laughs].

Do a lot of people get your name wrong? I remember hearing Ryder Lawson and Cam calling you Jason one day as a joke, but I didn’t get it. Is there a story there?

Nah, no story there. Ryder [Lawson] has just cooked his brain from all that guarana. People do get confused about my name, though, because a lot of the time I get introduced as J-Pat. It’s funniest when people introduce me to their parents with that name.

I heard you went to Shore, which must be one of the most prestigious private schools around. What was that like?

The school itself was actually pretty dope. If you replaced the students and the teachers and the rules it would’ve been sick, because the facilities were so good. They had rock-climbing walls in the gym, diving boards, crazy art facilities, two massive grandstands and all the music equipment you could ever need. I liked it in terms of all that