When We Was Rad: Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Two of my favourite skaters grin out at us from this Zorlac advert.
Mark and Barry Abrook were at the heart of British skateboarding right back to the Andover days. In fact, I think that should be “Thruxton Days”, but that was before my time. They go right back.
This advert was to promote their joint (I think) signature model “Limey Bastards from Hell”. Someone let me know, please: have I got that right?

Oh dear: I never could bring myself to cut down the words. So here we have a page almost solid with text. It’s all here: references to Lance Mountain’s South London connections (his grandmother and skating at the Mad Dog Bowl with Seth Parker), sly digs at request for “professional” bank tricks, and endless trick lists.
There’s no way I’m going to type all that for the second time round. Sorry.
I believed these tours were hugely important at the time and so we gave them vast amounts of space. Times have changed now and skating is in a different world where such things no longer stand out as exceptional.

I have a pet theory that the entire development of skateboarding was changed by the introduction of affordable video cameras around the time of the first H Street video. So I was really excited when I came across a short skateboarding video clip in high-speed high-definition, shot on Red cameras: skate – shot on red – 120 fps from opus magnum prod. on Vimeo.

The thought of the security guards at the Edinburgh Virgin Megastore only letting skaters in 10 at a time makes me smile. They must have wondered what was going on. Back in 1988 skateboarding was only just emerging from the underground.

This demo took place just after Livingston had been resurfaced and coping had been added and the Caballero picture on this page stands out as a fine display of the benefits.

The Powell team flew to Edinburgh for the day and the rest of the tour was confined to the midlands and south of England. So this would also have been the best chance for skaters from northern England to catch the tour. I suspect people like Michael O’Brien would have been in the crowd that day. It’s hard these days to imagine the intensity of sessions like these: Livingston was the only park in the UK of that quality and people travelled from all over the place to cram in to the tiny space around the lip.

This picture by Dobie certainly brings a smile to my face. The skatepark at Bowes Lyon House saw many interesting scenes of one kind or another over the years, but for pure skateboarding the Powell Peralta tour of 1988 must have been one of the greatest. I really like this picture: it seems to me to be a classic of that era.
Footnote: in 1988 the ramp skating climax would have been expected to take place at the monster ramp at Latimer Road, in London. But rain put the dampers on that day. So Stevenage took the honors for the vert-ramp session of the tour.