When We Was Rad: Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

As I glance at these adverts I realise how little interest I had in the equipment, even though I was surrounded with it for most of my working life. Instead I find myself contemplating the technology which was used to produce pages like this: the effort which a shop would have had to put in to manage such a process when desktop computing was relatively new and desktop publishing still just round the corner for small companies.
My view of this period is very different from the collectors of equipment, I’m afraid. I realise it must be very frustrating. It was always the skating itself and the skater’s attitude to life for me; not the equipment and not the clothing.

The odd one out here is the advert from the Advertising Standards Authority. These were used as fillers if the advertising space had not been sold to anyone.
Every now and again we would find ourselves on the receiving end of their attention when someone got upset about an advert. The most bizarre example of that I can recall was a “Slimeballs Vomits” advert which showed some very fake looking sick with the wheels montaged on to it. I still can’t quite work out why something as cartoon-like as that upset anyone sufficiently for them to complain. But it did. The story even got some coverage in things like Time Out magazine. Most odd.
In other cases, as when Mambo ran an advert with a cartoon character being crucified, I could see the point. Whether I could see the point or not didn’t actually matter, since the editorial team had no involvement in the adverts, but we were the public face and we took the flak.

The most interesting of these, for me, is the Skate-shop Nini advert. Rollersnakes and Off-beat are still very familiar names, but what’s the story behind a shop from Belgium advertising in a British magazine? The geography of skateboarding was different then and there was even less of a notion of ‘Europe’ than there is now.

It would be interesting to know more. Perhaps one day someone will stumble across this and provide the history.

Small Room Skateboards… I have only the vaguest memories of them. Perhaps someone can help out with more information? Tony Buyalos and Donny Wilson are listed as team riders.
Other adverts are from classic ‘skater owned shops’ — Clan/Poizone and SS20 with SS20 claiming the fastest mail order in the UK! The SS20 ad also details their various ramps such as ‘the only vert spine ramp in the country at Mons’ and hints at the coming of a new ramp just down the road from the shop. It must have been not long after this that I went to see that new ramp and saw Tom Penny skate for the first time.

Move along now: nothing to see here. I was about to go off on a rant about how cheap those delivery charges are, but in fact the 2006 equivalents are probably less when you allow for inflation. I don’t think anyone was charging extra for delivery to the Highlands, Northern Ireland or other islands back in those days, however. Eighty quid for a complete pro setup, including Powell, though… Like I said, “move along now.”

M Zone, heavy into Carnaby Street and Stussy by this time, but also trying to sell as well, by the look of it. Curious how I’ve completely forgotten these price-based adverts. Only the earlier styley muthas stick in the mind.

Rage was “the indispensable teen guide to dance, indie, rock, rap, tv, film… and more” according to the advert. This was another in-house Maxwell advert, but in this case there was some genuine overlap. I’m not sure what happened to Rage. I have a vague feeling that Steve Hicks, who was later to take R.a.d and Phat into some wonderful territory, worked as a designer on Rage.

This from the days when Zorlac had their own UK distribution company. In this respect Airbourne Zorlac were up with Powell in the ‘ahead of their time’ stakes; they had a go at doing their own distribution in the UK long before most manufacturers.
By 2006 this approach had become much more common. The European distributors are starting to be squeezed out of the picture and are taking to manufacture instead, as skateboarding becomes a mature (!) global industry. I expect the trend to continue as the ‘distribution’ stage in the supply chain gradually fades out.

It’s an advert. It’s for skateboard shoes.
Skateboard shoes (DC, not these) kept me alive for many years and almost paid off the debts built up by publishing skateboard magazines, so they’re fine by me.

The issue closes with a Speed Freaks video advert. At last. It’s been a long slog working my way through this fat edition of the magazine, and I’m starting to have doubts about the virtue of posting every single advert up here.
For the time being I will carry on with the same approach for the next issue, but it may soon be time to reconsider the approach to take. What’s the feeling here?