When We Was Rad: Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Cheeky comments about Gary Lee, Ged Wells and Selina Scott? Vernon was on form this month.

HEFTIER HOGS SLIMMER LEE

Pacer’s range continues to evolve. They’ve brought out a new version of their Hogs shoes. These have a beefier sole, which will please everyone who liked the originals for their ‘instant worn in’ feel but were less chuffed with the ‘pretty soon worn out’ pay-off. Continue Reading »

From the days when wheels were between 57 and 65mm high. An age gone by.

This is a good pages for skateboard historians. Here we have items about Death Box and Ian Deacon. Put those two together later and come up with Flip. There’s also news of more “Freestyle in Street Terrain” as well as the arrival of commercial ramp-builders on the scene…

COLCHESTER

Everything’s happening: the expansion of the Stanway mini to mini-chin complex is just for starters, say the Pig Shed Posse. They’re building a vert ramp outside too. But on top of that the council are coming up with two concrete parks, one at the recreation centre and another small one in Greenstead plus a £7k Latimer Road scale ramp at Wivenhoe, plus a large outdoor mini-ramp complex at Tiptree. Old King Cole is turning out to be a rad old soul.
Continue Reading »

Steve Douglas in a Smash Hits TV Commercial? Lucian Hedrickse on “You Bet? These were early days for TV’s use of skateboading. More was to come…
The “Chingford Torched” Stop Press story was clearly so fresh that we didn’t have time to set any type. That’s not a retro “typewriter” font: it would have been typed on a typewriter and then blown up on a photocopier.

US SHORTS

• Nightmare on H Street, the new H Street Video should be in the shops in time for Christmas.
• Dillo park in Texas has closed
• Davie Philip is on tour with Foundation
• Team Blue Death are now approaching English sounding kids on the streets of Huntington Beach and using them as couriers to ferry exposed film and exotic memorabilia back to base Zone

WHERE NOW?

US immigration officials must have been stunned when Aaron Deeter, Stephanie Person and Ryan Monyhan returned to those shores. Deeter’s now courting (jail) while Stephanie and Ryan have the best answering machine we’ve heard in years.

EXPOSURE

Watch out for: Lucian on You Bet, Steve D in a Smash Hits commercial and behind the scenes coaching for Motormouth from Rueben and the chaps from Slam. And check out the Insane stickers Continue Reading »

This comes at an appropriate moment: I heard from Nick Philip last week. He’s still in San Francisco and he’s designing T shirts again. There’s an article about Nick in Res Magazine or you can see the shirts themselves at The Imaginary Foundation. “Is it Art?” the headline asked, at a time when the idea of anything to do with skateboarding appearing in a gallery seemed very strange. Exhibitions of skateboard graphics as art now seem commonplace and the number of skaters and ex-skaters who are now working as artists (without trading on the skating side of things) is vast. By further coincidence, I’ve bumped into two of those this week as well: Scott Myles and Simon Evans.

By the way, I’ve alread posted the issue covering then The Birmingham NEC Skateboard Competition mentioned here.

Picture show Marc and Barry Abrook, the ramp in Teignmouth and some orignal Anarchic Adustment graphics.

QUAKE TALES

What were you doing when the great quake struck? Typically M Zone and Anarchic ex-pat, Nick Philip, were talking on the phone. Mr Philip’s comments are not recorded. Strangely enough none of the familiar names from the area, not even Santa Cruz, suffered any major damage

BUT IS IT ART?

Nick Philip’s first exhibition of photo-copy art should be on now at The M Zone Gallery, Lowndes Court, Carnaby Street _ in the window. The NON private view was set for November 14th and the show will be on, 24 hours a day, for the following two weeks.

ZORLAC UK

The Abrook brothers have now opened up a Zorlac/Airbourne distribution base in Portsmouth and they’re awash with stock (the roof leaks), if not expensive leased office fittings. Expect to see a much higher Zorlac presence in Europe next year.

BIG BRUM COMP

Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre will be the venue for a huge pro skate contest on December 13th, 14th and 15th. Top skaters from Britain, the rest of Europe and the USA will be invited to compete in ramp, street and, get this, canyon (banked) slalom, for prizes totalling at least £4,000. Continue Reading »

The pictures on this page were from our road trip to Northern Ireland. It’s a great shame we didn’t get out more.

FEATURES

• 20 SCARY PLACES More pleasurable carbuncles
• 35 BARBECUE AT BEAST MANOR Shred, pig out and party
• 41 DEATH BOX CHRISTMAS COMPETITION Seasonal fun with Team DB
• 44FREESTYLE IN STREET TERRAIN They came, they saw, they kick-flipped
• 52IRELAND The forgotten isle
• 60 EL TORRO GRANDE Everything you need to know about the Madrid AES competition

DEPARTMENTS

• 8 EARS So, tell me about it
• 15 LETTERS No, don’t
• 16 WHERE? Mini Traveller
• 27 INTROS John Coffey, Jason Ellis
• 33 ENCYCLOPAEDIA G
• 70 XS Royal ragers

COVER Christian Heitman PHOTO: Mike John ILLUSTRATION: Ian who skates Crouch End CONTENTS Blurred Wurzel at Clive’s in
Dublin; Damp Derry, Ollie Airwalk on the only dry patch; Steve’s ramps, Antrim; Dublin crew PHOTO: Jay
Continue Reading »

Airwalk ran the same advert several times, which means that there’s not much to be said about this time round. It’s good to see that they tried to produce something specific to the European market, but it’s a shame that it didn’t work better. Having said that, perhaps they recognised a fundamental truth with the emphasis on a skate celebrity surrounded by grinning kids.

I don’t know which is more amusing, the weird product or the placement of this advertorial competition.
The prize is a cap containing a radio, complete with a telescopic aerial. Cheesy or what? Did these things work, I wonder?
The placement of the competition before the contents page (they were normally near the back of the magazine) and opposite the paid-for Tango advert would have been the work of the advertising department. They were effectively giving away one of “their” advertising pages with something which looked almost like magazine editorial.
I have no memory of this, but I suspect this competition would not have attracted many entries.

Long before the days of Sprite’s involvement in skateboarding, Britvic had spotted the potential. The choice of imagery for this advert could not have been worse: all street cultures are hardly the same! Getting the fine detail of things like that has always been a problem for big agencies. It would have been a bold step for someone to decide to experiment with an advert in a magazine like R.a.D. so having to justify spending even more to produce a more relevant advert would have been almost impossible.

These days advertising agencies are much better at it than this and specific “skateboard” adverts could be included in the budget. There are even PR companies who pride themselves on dealing with this market. But even now many attempts stand out like a sore thumb to real skaters.

Runnning a double-page spread advert must have been a huge investment for Jeremy Fox at this point. Ultimately it all came good for him with Flip, but that was a long time in the future. The skaters featured are Pete Dossett on the left and Wurzel on the right. The Wurzel picture was taken at Bloblands in Norwood Park.
This advert marked the introduction of DoDo wheels. Up to this point I think Death Box had just done decks and accessories.