When We Was Rad: Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Here’s a Mambo advert which did not get us into trouble the Advertising Standards Authority and nor did it cause us to be denounced from pulpits. Some of their other efforts had those effects.

There isn’t really much more to say about this, is there?

Over on Facebook, someone has just suggested that I should create a page for this site. What do you think? When I added the reader survey it caused a drop in the number of people commenting here and it’s already too quiet in these parts. I don’t want to make things even quieter!

The 1988 Powell Team tour was so rad. If you caught them you’re stoking. If you didn’t you will be: we’ve got the highlights of the official demos AND all the fun bits that went on in between. Because if you thought they just sat in some hotel room in between the shows you’re very, very wrong. They’re skaters after all. What would you do when you weren’t demoing? Turn the page and find out…

Captions:
Steve Caballero: boosts that filthy boneless at Stevenage
Mike Vallely: 360 Mute at Stevenage after the stopped ramp play

Both photos by Dobie

At the time of writing, Southsea Skatepark is under threat and there is a petition to save it here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/save-southsea/

The pictures come from a happier time, with the park under the supervision of John Thurston and and visited by all manner of legends, as we see here.

This was the opening page of an 11 page feature on the Powell Tour. At the time those tours were hugely important. They brought some extremely rad skating to the UK when there were no international competitions or other events to attract hordes of top skaters.

Tours like this one provided the only chance for most people to see skating at this level and were the focus for a vast amount of energy.

Captions:
Tommy Guerrero: at Southsea he got down and skated. Ollie (huge) to (tweaked) Slob off the launch ramp.
Lance Mountain: different — Stalefish Boneless at Meanwhile

The Lance Mountain picture was by Dobie.

There’s also an unofficial Southsea Skatepark site and a page about the skatepark on the Portsmouth Council site.

I’ve just been watching Winstan’s latest film on a subject close to my heart: skateboarders creative use of public space. Once again the South Bank is under threat and the film assembles an interesting range of people to argue that the skaters are a more integral part of the culture of the area than yet another coffee shop.

In 1989 it was very strange to see a soft drink advert in a skateboard magazine. The idea of such a high-profile brand taking any interest in skateboarding was a novelty. There had been such adverts back at the end of the seventies, perhaps (Fanta comes to mind), but that was a long time ago.
Looking back on this twenty years later it now turns out to have been the start of a deluge. One which swept away many of the aspects of skateboarding in the eighties which had made it so appealing.

Livingston skatepark has always placed the emphasis on pure fun, rather than serious competition. There was a competition on this day, complete with judges, but at the end they announced that everyone had placed first. My type of competition. Events like this were also a great chance to print pictures of people doing strange and gnarly things rather than concentrating purely on the latest and most ambitious trick. A happy day all round.