When We Was Rad: Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Jay Podesta’s photograph shows Will Bankhead skating ‘somewhere in the City’. This was around the time that the City of London started to get really hostile to skateboarders.

Do you get pissed off with people coming on better than you on the grounds that their skating (or type of skating) is better than yours? It’s fashionable to take the piss out of kids who get hung up about who can do what tricks. But the people who take the piss are careful to maintain their particular status. It’s not how high you can Ollie, for them, but the point remains the same — ‘I’m better than you’. In this case because ‘I’ am into a ‘better’ form of skating.
This prejudiced view has established a set hierarchy: concrete, good; big vert ramps, nearly as good; mini-ramps, bad. Just as some do-gooders insist that skateboard graphics are the work of devil, so some skaters carry on as if satan had come up with the idea of the mini. They forget that skating is constantly changing: that when they first took to riding back yard pools most ‘skaters’ were more into spinning 360s or racing down hills. Or maybe they don’t forget? Maybe deep down they fear the new?

A crashing change of gear takes place at this point. It’s hard to work out what the idea was. I have a feeling that the first part of this feature was written by Gavin and that the second part was by me and that this page is the dividing point. I think I detect a switch into lecture mode as well as a division within the editorial camp. The exact kind of thing I was describing to Joe Millson in a comment on another post. This is me having gripe in print, I suspect:

STOP RIGHT HERE

Now go back, read that stuff again but this time and ask yourself whether you agree. Beneath all the standard ‘open your eyes and your mind’ stuff we usually trot out, is the assumption that a particular style of skating is ‘bad’.
Why?

I really like this picture of Nicky Guerrero, taken by Claus Grabke. I wish we had run more images like these.

Conformity breeds stagnation which spreads like a plague of death and destruction, and napalms our very souls. Instead of going for the latest trick, go for a new line. Tramlines may be in vogue in skinny haircuts on young hippety-hoppity heads, but at least they’re showing variety. Take a leaf out of their book: I saw these photos from some New York barber’s the other day — there was a Mickey Mouse on a skateboard. That barber had the lines sussed.
Tramlines? Leave them in Blackpool, mate, leave them in Blackpool.

Going off at a tangent time: this advert for premium voice lines makes me think of a recent news story I heard about one of the biggest companies specialising in dialtones and the like. They’d just started expanding into China, I think. The thing which struck me is that the company in question is run by Martin Higginson. That’s the same Martin Higginson who used to publish Sk8 Action back in the day. If so he’s certainly gone on to bigger and better things. Good luck to him. I wonder where Cyril is now?

Great picture of Reuben Goodyear skating a playground in Kensington, taken by Jay (Podesta).

Everyone’s got a line in them unfortunately today more and more are choosing tramlines. They’re stuck in a groove and won’t break out.
Mini-ramps have brought many good things into skating, but on the down side they’ve given many skaters a tramline which they lay down everywhere. Ramps, reservoirs, parks and even pools are now becoming just mini-ramp substitutes as the tramlines are laid down across them. Back and forth everyone goes with aerobic style routines.
All terrain contains an infinite number of lines, so why not ignore the squashed circle most have chosen? BREAK FREE! Go back and forth, up and down, round and round, crave figures of eight even. Crave figures that if you drew them would look like some Dada drugs experiment.
Find a line, hide it, find a new one. Then get your old one out and show off. Lines are as much a part of the creative side of skating as tricks: a creative skater can find lines that enhance his skating.

Picture shows Shane O’Brien at Neasden, and it’s only when I look it at it now that I start to appreciate why we ran it (I took the pictures but tried to leave the choice to other people). This feature looks like one of those excuses to run a load of pictures we liked…

Main points of interest? Loads of decks at around £42 and plenty of wheels for less than £30. The big range of protective clothing and the section devoted to plastics date it. So does the small number of shoes on offer!
Videos featured in this advert were Streets on Fire, Public Domain, Animal Chin, Bones I and II, Gotcha Grind and H Street’s Shackle Me Not. Good to see that many of these classics are enjoying a well deserved life as re-releases on DVD. A bit like this site…

This was page one of a double page spread advert for Rollersnakes, who were clearly going for mail order in a big way. Complete skateboards started at £75 with RIP trucks and wheels, others were £90 or £105. Powell decks cost £5 extra. Those were different times.

I challenge you to follow this: two sequences, one running round the other on the same page. In fact it works quite well: we were always trying to get a correct sense of movement and direction into these things.
Fakie 05/05 to Fakie and Backside Lipslide, courtesy of Arron Bleasdale at Kings Cross ramp (just down the road from our offices at the time).

I guess this was just an experiment. I can’t remember any good reason why we flipped this and ran it as a negative. I don’t think this was a mistake in repro: I would have remembered something as spectacular as this!

Captain Wager must have hated us when he saw it.

I’ve made a reversed normal version of it now, in an attempt to compensate…