When We Was Rad: Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

It’s almost impossible to read this (echoes of the very earliest issues of the magazine), but it says “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Remember, in those days we were working blind, with no on-screen view of what the page would look like, and no proofs either (apart from the front cover where the budget covered a proof, but not making any changes if we didn’t like what we saw).
The caption on the bottom picture reads: “Worcester on a rainy night. Go for a skate, then down the pub. Paul Atkins.”
The top picture is from Mon’s ramp and I think it’s Jason Lunn. No caption, though.

Always keen to spread the word about events of any kind, even when the details were almost non-existent… In this example we have:

• A freestyle competition at the South Bank
• A locals street competition in Lisburn
• AES Cup in Denmark
• AES Cup in Hamburg
• AES Cup in Gothenborg
• AES Cup in France
• AES Cup in Britain
• Monster Meistership in Munster
• European Championships in Switzerland
• AES Final in Czechoslovakia

Oh, and the subscription advert?

Continue Reading »

I’m intrigued by this: even in 1990, when the magazine was very far from the BMX scene, Hot Wheels still saw it as a means to try to keep their flame alive. And they were right.
It reminds me of the days when Alpine Action tried to use BMX Action Bike to keep the spirit of skateboarding going. Action Bike were not at all keen on the idea of skateboard adverts at the time.
I recall an advert we dreamed up in the Sun in Splendour, Continue Reading »

Can’t think of anything to say about this one, sorry!

I like this, for some reason which I can’t quite place. There is something slightly unusual about it. I’m also intrigued by the amount of space we gave to this feature, but that was probably the effect of weather and production schedules during the Christmas period.

This interests me from a technical point of view. It looks to me as if this was one of the experiments in using high-speed colour negative film instead of the colour transparency film more common for reproduction in those days. Most of the time I’d use Fuji Velvia for the colour saturation, resolution and lack of grain. It was nominally 50ISO but I rated it at 32. This meant the background light indoors scarcely registered, even with very long exposures. Colour print films seemed to offer a better balance of speed/quality so I would sometimes use those to try and get a bit of context into the indoor work. Always interested in the context… Always wanted everyone to feel they had been there at the time…

Two page colour spreads were a luxury, back when I was a lad. I wish we could have used them more.

A very “February issue” set of images, with a cold blueness to the light. No wonder I seemed to speak more favourably of the indoor session, even though the genuine street would have been preferred at almost any other time of year.

Lecture mode was clearly on. This article, forcing a link between an indoor session in a sports centre in Bolton and one of those “down your way” type visits to Basingstoke, now seems strained in the extreme. Very self conscious.

Not enough time to say much about this. All three shops were important players at the time. I bumped into Rick (as mentioned in the Split advert) a couple of months ago. He’d been working at Slingshot Design (who did the HSC web site) for some time. I think we’d even spoken on the phone, as well as exchanging email, but it was only when I walked into their office that I realised “I know you…”

Read on down the thread and you will find it evolve from ponderings on the nature of Manchester skateboard retail in the eighties all the way through to the world of British Art in 2006…