When We Was Rad:
Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Vallely on Vert, Mountain in ‘Birmingham’ and Guerrero Where?


Lance Mountain, Tommy Guerrro, Mike Vallely: Latimer Road, London 1988The curse of captioning strikes again. That doesn’t look like Birmingham to me. But maybe my eyesight is failing!
This page marks the end of the monster coverage of the Powell Tour of 1988. Looking back on it, I think we went over the top: there’s 11 pages of it. That was huge amount in the days when the magazine was only 56 pages thick. But we were into this kind of thing. It was exciting. It was an event in the days before there were any stadium-type skate events in Britain.
It also involved getting out on the road and sharing in the atmosphere at a whole load of different places. That was very much more a R.a.D mag type of thing than any big centralised competition.


7 responses to “Vallely on Vert, Mountain in ‘Birmingham’ and Guerrero Where?”

  1. Guerrero Where? – I would guess Romford, on the hip near the pool……the concrete looks very damp, I’d be happy just to skate like that on dry day!!

  2. If that was the first big Powell Demo, then the Bones brigade split up, only Lance and Cab came to Birmingham Wheels. I can still remember Cabs stalefish grabs, so sweet.

    Those vert pics are from the ramp in That London under the flyover, cant remember its name.

  3. I got into the Birmingham skate scene around 89 and I know the wheels ramps changed a bit during that time. I wasn’t there for this event but I agree, the vert ramp doesn’t look like wheels and they definitely didn’t have any concrete. All the same though, it makes me wanna go grab a deck n do a few sess slides. That’s probably about all I’m good now. Perhaps the odd 1ft ollie. Ha ha. Lovin this site though. It doesn’t matter how long these things take to get up n running. I think this was a special time for a lot of people and you only need a glimpse of nostalgia to get the juices flowing. I’m 39 years old now and I still look at curbs and handrails n shit n think “That looks like fun!” It never leaves ya! :0)

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