When We Was Rad:
Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Month: April 2008

  • But You Don’t Have to Skate It

    Quote of the Harrow Day for me was someone stopping me when I was getting all sorrowful about the loss of a classic skatepark (“the first Ollies in Britain were done here, as far as I know” etc etc). “But you don’t have to skate it, Tim.”

  • Livingston Fun Day September 1988

    I was talking about Livingston at the “goodbye to Harrow Day” last week. With Harrow and Southsea under threat we’re heading towards a situation where Livingston will be one of the oldest skateparks in Britain (I hope Rom’s still OK). At the time this story was written, though, I still thought of it as “new”…

  • Is there a story behind this Death Box advert

    This Death Box “Pete Dossett” advert looks like one which might have a story behind it. Although it seems fairly roughly put together, it uses two spot colours, which means that it would normally have been expensive. Death Box were still just starting out (in fact the company is called “Dee See Supplies” in this…

  • Calendar of Skateboard Events, September 1988

    You can tell a lot about the state of skateboarding in 1988 from this list. On the ‘big, organised’ front we have the AES competition series contests in Belgium and Prague. Coming up on the inside is ‘commerce discovers skateboarding’ in the form of the Rockit/Swatch Skate Tour in Narbarth and Newquay. But the ones…

  • Last Ever Harrow Day?

    If you can get to Harrow Skatepark, April 19th would be a good day to do so. It’s likely to be the last ever Harrow Day, unless the Council change their minds about demolishing the park. I was there on the day that Tony Alvan and Mark Baker officially opened the park, and Harrow is…

  • Hector the Hardcore Hippy

    The legendary Mac was responsible for pioneering freestyle/street/bank crossovers (540 on banks, anyone?), the original Death Box graphics, and the R.a.D cartoon for a while. I wonder where he is now? In 2007 Jeremy Fox was trying to track him down for the Death Box European reunion, but had a bit of a struggle. Mac,…

  • Skate and Annoy

    Now that I’ve got the ability to speak in the present tense and break out of the limitations of “another scanned page from the old magazine” theme, I have the chance to refer to things like the kind words about this thing (and Rollin’ Through the Decades) on Skate and Annoy recently. I really like…

  • Technical Issues

    I don’t normally go in for self-regarding nonsense about this site. After all, the whole thing is self-regarding material about something from the past, and I need to draw a line somewhere. But I’ve recently upgraded to a new version of WordPress and have taken the opportunity to add this extra space for items which…