When We Was Rad: Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Letters from: The Joe Lush Does Our Head in Mob, A Confused Skater from Bradford, Ollie Spackman from Thornton Heath, Sean Goff writing from Bakersfield USA, Jimbo The Mosher from Doncaster, A Trickless Skateboarding Freak called Nat, Mark, Carl Anderson, Pup, Crav (Sec of Squashed Squid and Semolina Skate Squad), Matthew Butterworth from Ormskirk, Mark Hutton of SEA and Jock from Roehampton.
The letters page at this point lacked the genius touch of Nigel Thomas (BMX Action Bike era) or Gavin Hills (classic era) but was still a very important part of the magazine for us.

“Approach the object at a moderate speed.” The classic skate how-to opening! Writing trick tips can be a real struggle. Shane O’Brien obliged at the Shell Centre.

“Dance Freaky and Adjust”. For most skate (and fashion) trivia freaks the 1987 Stussy advert, placed by M Zone, will appear more significant. But for me it’s the Anarchic Adjustment advert from Nick Philip which dominates this page and my memories of the period. The slogan resonates still.
Two Seasons from Northampton and Winchester BMX’n'Skates were also worthy supporters of course. But M-Zone and Anarchic gave the flavour to that year.

Our support of the Holeshot event probably went a bit too far. From the look of this we even included a ticket booking form in the main body of the feature!

Two more shops who were solid players back in the day, and both from Kent by some unfortunate coincidence, I think. Variflex and Powell are very noticeable as well as Brand X and Blockhead. Finger boards are in there as well, of course, and Tracker Ultralights cost just £15.95 each. In amongst the G & S decks you can see the Danny Webster model listed as well as Nicky Guerrero’s making a showing for the pioneering European riders.

A Steve Keenan shot from Raging Waters, montaged with an earlier Sobell Centre sticker toss. Action Bike and R.a.D were always behind events like this where the emphasis was on the fun rather than the competition, so we got as far behind this as we could with a piece which verges on advertorial. But if someone (especially someone starting out, like Ruffell) was prepared to take the risk of bringing over a load of American pros we would always back them and give them coverage. At this point visits and tours were still very exciting to everyone, including us.

The big Christmas event for 1987 was Andy Ruffell’s Holeshot competition. He knew how to stage such things, even then. This was the first year in which skating was included, and Christian Hosoi was on the list. Also lined up were Jeff Grosso and Jason Jessee with Marc Gonzales and Gator in the “maybe in your dreams” category. Continue Reading »

The M-Zone adverts defined this period of R.a.D just as much as Nick Philip’s design. They captured the energy of the time and their influence was astonishing. Chuckie B was the mind behind them and can be seen in two of the pictures here (in sunglasses). The legendary Curtis McCann started his career with M-Zone, Continue Reading »

Buddies was a strange shop. They made a bit of a stir at about this time, trading heavily on the idea that they’d been around a long time (picture of Benjy team riders on the wall to prove it), but most of the London skate establishment were very dubious. I think Sketchy had a poke at them over it. At this time it was hard to come to terms with the idea that there might be other pockets of skaters who were not part to the ESA, South Bank, Crystal Palace bubble. That cosy world was about to explode.
Motorcyle City was part of yet another world. In a cruel irony their advert appeared opposite one from M-Zone…

All you have to do was to complete the limerick:

For a Street Scoot with Pacer to thank,
And no need to visit a bank,
Just write the last line,
To end in a rhyme…

What makes me think we weren’t as into scooters as the number of pages devoted to them in this issue suggested?