When We Was Rad: Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

If you’re interested in the history of skateboarding in Britain, this site contains original vintage UK skateboard material from the eighties and nineties which originally appeared in R.a.D Magazine.

This is an exercise in skateboard nostalgia for old school skaters and a glimpse of the roots of British skating for historians and people researching street culture: part of the Long Tail for skateboarding in the U.K. There are also hints of what life was like producing magazines in the days before desktop publishing. Continue Reading »

“Made tough and comfy for nocturnal activities. A size guage or color or feel to compliment any occasion: Being a smart ass to a Dennys waitress at 4.am. Impressing your friends by sticking your left ear to a mega watt thumping Cerwin Vega. A neuron firing sugar rush from ten too many raspberry blowpops. Getting frisked by some over zealous renta cop. Winding down watching endless cartoons. Made in Los Angeles CA and available virtually knowhere.”

‘Clobber’ = not a good name for a clothing company in the age of Google, but probably fine in 1992, a couple of years before such considerations became vital when choosing a name.

More than this I cannot say. I have no recollection of who was distributing this in the UK. Can anyone add to the history, please?

Steve Martin did “The Jerk”
Eddie Murphy was “Delirious”
Richard Pryor didn’t know “Which Way Was Up”
but these orginal pranksters can’t come close to the new King of Comedy…

The Franz

Ronald “Franz” Knigge, touring in your home town soon…

This is a great example of a New Deal advert from a golden age. It took me a while to work out which company was running the advert. Which amuses me now, when I consider that I ended up working for them for eight years. But that was in the future when this advertisement appeared.

Move along now. There’s nothing more to be said here.

Yeah, right. Not a good start to this classic issue, but there we go. And I’ve only just now got the point of the headline. I don’t think I would ever have looked at it so closely when it first appeared!
I’m sitting here thinking if there’s anything to be said about this. And I’ve reached the conclusion that there isn’t.

Let’s move on.

Curtis McCann, legendary skater. The Shell Centre, legendary spot.

Coming up in this issue we’ll also see another legend, the Plan B video and also a few more infamous elements such as the experiments with early video-frame-grab technology and the free cover-mount R.a.D keyring. Including those three things in one sentence is some kind of joke. One of them was a world-changer, and it certainly wasn’t the keyring. Or the frame-grabs.

The cover lines for this issue:

• Curtis McCann on the Underworld
• New cyber style
• Tekno tv issue
• Fresh high speed sequences – frame by frame action
• Plan B Video review – best yet
• Holiday movies – North Wales, Scarborough
• Milton Keynes & Leigh on Sea comps
• Free lucky keyring

The strap line (not sure if this was the first appearance) was ‘Brain Food for Street Thugs’. But there’s also “Rebel Against Drudgery”, so this aspect of the cover was probably still evolving under the earnest guidance of Gavin Hills.

I’m glad that we’re finally able to go through one of the ‘larger-than-A4′ issues from the last period of the magazine. I really liked that era. The skating was pushing the limits in all manner of directions at that time and Curtis McCann was one of the defining skaters of the age.

I’m certainly no expert on vintage skateboard companies, so I’m not quite sure where this fits in, but what we have here is a Santa Cruz advert promoting a Natas Kaupas deck which includes the “Santa Monica Airlines” logo. Perhaps someone can help out with the details of the relationship on that brand to various skateboard companies over the years? I have a vague recollection that it’s a complicated story.

On a simpler note the three other decks featured here are from Rob Roskopp, Claus Grabke and Jeff Grosso.

Those last two are skaters who both had a direct impact on Rad Magazine at various points.

Claus Grabke’s multi-talented and prolific approach included photography, writing and music so he contributed to the European skate scene and the magazine in a very direct way.

Grosso’s influence was less specific, but he was one of those fascinating people who influenced the magazine through his words as well as his skating. He struck chords which resonated strongly with the spirit of the time.

Hills Skates in Muswell Hill were a long time advertiser in R.a.D. but I can’t remember a great deal about them. The Bauer Turbo Roller skate which features so prominently here encourages my notion that their background was in eight wheels, not four.

I’ve just noticed one point of interest here:

Mapled Blank Deck with Concave, Blue Stained and Varnished 30″ x 10″ £14.95

Blanks in 1988? That would have been a very early example of a phenomenon which I normally think of as coming along later.

Or have I got that wrong?

Skate Paraphernalia from September 1988:

Motobilt and Rannalli trucks, Schmitt Stix Chainsaw and Chris Miller decks, Dog Town Micke Alba deck, a Swatch pouch and a Stussy No 4 T shirt. But my favourite thing here is the custom skate badge from Ian Walker in Doncaster.

Meanwhile for everyone interested in vintage skateboard decks, look at these beauties from the days when shapes were different. Very different in the case of the Schmitt chainsaw! Interesting to note that 33″ was considered a longboard at the time.

“To Remain Underground and Exclusive is to Resist the Mainstream
Therefore This is Not an Anarchic Adjustment Advert”

It may seem unfair to place so much emphasis on the Anarchic Adjustment advert here when there are also ads from Glasgow stalwarts, Clan and Mach in Edinburgh, but I saw Nick last month for the first time in a decade. So this is very topical.

In the early days of R.a.D there were two of us sharing a single desk in the corner of someone else’s office. Nick defined the future of R.a.D just as much as I did. And he’s still at it: as his blog puts it: “Somewhere Something Incredible is Waiting to be Known.”

Nick Philip at work stickering the ramp with Anarchic Adjustment stickers back in 1988, before taking it to America. Zak Shaw looks on as local offers up a loco Twist from low to high…

slithering back in whenever and wherever he wished. He used the whole of the ramp with no holds barred: carving Bone-air, jamming Saran type things, snapping aggro Inverts on the other side then back for a tech¬nical lip manoeuvre on the other wall. Even if he hadn’t thrown in all the variations, watching him butcher the ramp with his carves would have been enough for me. Mental! Ever since his days of channel jumping at Meanwhile Greg Guillotte has been a gnarly risk-taker, and his performance at Chingford was no exception. Pure energy.

AGROUP
The A group was decidedly under-staffed. It consisted of Graham Marfleet, Greg Guillotte and Jason Ellis. Mike Canning, Scot Carol, Lee Reynolds and company were all absent. This didn’t affect the intensity of the action but only the length of time it lasted. Graham Marfleet is really pushing the limits these days and making some waves: he’s been around for ever but now people are starting to take notice. Lips, air contortion and street are where he is strong. Graham’s runs centred around airs from the high section to the low section — gnarly variations like X-down One Footer, Double Can-cans, One-hand One-footers and tweako Look-backs. The Lip was in there also: he did one Front-wheel Hop-drop where his foot flailed but he regained control and made it. Crowd elated, rider stoked: Marfleet tore — he stays on.
Continue Reading »

Everything here looks the same as before when you study the details in that overview picture. But I have a feeling things were beginning to change. Skateboarding was taking off again and BMX was about to undergo another transformation. This was the start of something different. In retrospect, I wish we had found more space for this over the years.

Nick Philip provided the words.

What do you want to know about the Chingford bike jam? Think: think of a question, and, using my inter-rider-related powers of ESP, I’ll answer it before your very eyes…

The answer to your question is… Yes, yes he did.

Amazing, hey! — You don’t seem too impressed. Well, let me expand. Bikes are many things to many people. I sometimes think that riding is one of the best things in the world because, like art, it is an expression not just defined by what you do but just as much by what you don’t do. The method, the means and the medium. You create an action and by doing this, by making it yours, you state that at this precise second in your life this is what you want to do. SO DO IT.

The riders at the Chingford Jam wanted to ride, so they rode. The jam was the second rider organised half-pipe jam in the UK and the first in the ‘INVERT’ series organised by Tim Ruck and Greg Guillotte. Sponsorship came from M-Zone, Swatch, Stussy, and Gordon & Smith: these guys put money into it so that’s cool. Paul Wright had resurfaced the whole ramp and added a low section with the same transition as the rest of the ramp, but with about a foot and a half cut off. Faze 7 funded that, which is cool too.

The low section was killer for lip tricks of course and surprisingly good for airs. The locals were jamming 5 – 6 feet airs with rad variations from transitions which were way under-vert. Some even making 540s.

The turnout was good: about 300 people, most with their bikes. When that kind of quantity are gathered together by one ramp it’s a LOT of bikes. The platforms had to be cleared as lip tricks were to be expected. Talking of lips, the stickers were out in force. There are some happening zine stickers these days. So much so that five minutes after the jam the lip was completely stripped of all but one type of sticker.