On a simpler note the three other decks featured here are from Rob Roskopp, Claus Grabke and Jeff Grosso.

Those last two are skaters who both had a direct impact on Rad Magazine at various points.

Claus Grabke’s multi-talented and prolific approach included photography, writing and music so he contributed to the European skate scene and the magazine in a very direct way.

Grosso’s influence was less specific, but he was one of those fascinating people who influenced the magazine through his words as well as his skating. He struck chords which resonated strongly with the spirit of the time.

I’ve just noticed one point of interest here:

Mapled Blank Deck with Concave, Blue Stained and Varnished 30″ x 10″ £14.95

Blanks in 1988? That would have been a very early example of a phenomenon which I normally think of as coming along later.

Or have I got that wrong?

Motobilt and Rannalli trucks, Schmitt Stix Chainsaw and Chris Miller decks, Dog Town Micke Alba deck, a Swatch pouch and a Stussy No 4 T shirt. But my favourite thing here is the custom skate badge from Ian Walker in Doncaster.

Meanwhile for everyone interested in vintage skateboard decks, look at these beauties from the days when shapes were different. Very different in the case of the Schmitt chainsaw! Interesting to note that 33″ was considered a longboard at the time.

It may seem unfair to place so much emphasis on the Anarchic Adjustment advert here when there are also ads from Glasgow stalwarts, Clan and Mach in Edinburgh, but I saw Nick last month for the first time in a decade. So this is very topical.

In the early days of R.a.D there were two of us sharing a single desk in the corner of someone else’s office. Nick defined the future of R.a.D just as much as I did. And he’s still at it: as his blog puts it: “Somewhere Something Incredible is Waiting to be Known.”

slithering back in whenever and wherever he wished. He used the whole of the ramp with no holds barred: carving Bone-air, jamming Saran type things, snapping aggro Inverts on the other side then back for a tech¬nical lip manoeuvre on the other wall. Even if he hadn’t thrown in all the variations, watching him butcher the ramp with his carves would have been enough for me. Mental! Ever since his days of channel jumping at Meanwhile Greg Guillotte has been a gnarly risk-taker, and his performance at Chingford was no exception. Pure energy.

AGROUP
The A group was decidedly under-staffed. It consisted of Graham Marfleet, Greg Guillotte and Jason Ellis. Mike Canning, Scot Carol, Lee Reynolds and company were all absent. This didn’t affect the intensity of the action but only the length of time it lasted. Graham Marfleet is really pushing the limits these days and making some waves: he’s been around for ever but now people are starting to take notice. Lips, air contortion and street are where he is strong. Graham’s runs centred around airs from the high section to the low section — gnarly variations like X-down One Footer, Double Can-cans, One-hand One-footers and tweako Look-backs. The Lip was in there also: he did one Front-wheel Hop-drop where his foot flailed but he regained control and made it. Crowd elated, rider stoked: Marfleet tore — he stays on.

Greg Guillotte had the over-vert section wired: airs 8 feet out, swinging double variations like No-footers to Turn-downs, BIG Inverts, One-handed Turn-downs — and he was SMOOTH. He has the best compressing and carving lines and he gave the lip mammoth amounts of abuse with stuff like low to high Chain-ring Rock’n'Rolls to Air in, low to high No-foot Jumps on to the platform and Disasters two feet out. Greg’s completely at home on the lip, jumping out C Group riders with a lot of bail-age going on. But there were also killer variations like double Can-can to Rocket in there around and above the lip. Zak was attempting twists out of the low section which was a real stoke.

The atmosphere was laid back, as it always is at that ramp. Everything was very mellow: the sun was saying hello and a knowledgeable, sizeable crowd was kicking back. There was a good healthy attitude on the platforms too. Everyone was en¬couraged to enter by Tim Ruck, event organiser and rider: his painless organisation and ex-ecution of the event made the whole thing come together.

Jason Ellis had been doing some dorkey stuff early in the day, but during his run dorking was the last thing he was doing. He was serious! Ellis has just got the raddest style. Everything works for him: he’s smooth, fast, aggressive, fluid, tweaked and high. He’s a pleasure to watch. He throws his GT all over the place, landing everything smoothly just below the coping ready for his pump and his next air. Jason’s variations included Back-cans, No-foot X-ups, Hand-can Can-cans, blistering Griz Airs, unholy Inverts, Clicked Turn-downs, Double Can-cans, Candy-bars, and Invert One-footers. He was shredding. He also did his patented front peg Drop-ins but his airs were his strength. With his uniform on Jason Ellis looks tike an over aggressive Josh White; he’s definitely one of the best vert riders we have.

As the jam drew to a close I was pleased to note that there were few major slams. Greg had a harsh 540° but got up unhurt. He won, maybe because Ellis was very tired on his tast run. The fatigue factor was impor¬tant on this occasion: with so few A Group riders the gap between runs was very short.

T Shirts and cheques were handed out as prizes and the crowd drifted over to the pad-dling pool for the customary jam circle. Phil Dolan per-formed. The talk was of the jam and of plans for the next day — riding plans that is.

Nick Philip provided the words.

What do you want to know about the Chingford bike jam? Think: think of a question, and, using my inter-rider-related powers of ESP, I’ll answer it before your very eyes…

The answer to your question is… Yes, yes he did.

Amazing, hey! — You don’t seem too impressed. Well, let me expand. Bikes are many things to many people. I sometimes think that riding is one of the best things in the world because, like art, it is an expression not just defined by what you do but just as much by what you don’t do. The method, the means and the medium. You create an action and by doing this, by making it yours, you state that at this precise second in your life this is what you want to do. SO DO IT.

The riders at the Chingford Jam wanted to ride, so they rode. The jam was the second rider organised half-pipe jam in the UK and the first in the ‘INVERT’ series organised by Tim Ruck and Greg Guillotte. Sponsorship came from M-Zone, Swatch, Stussy, and Gordon & Smith: these guys put money into it so that’s cool. Paul Wright had resurfaced the whole ramp and added a low section with the same transition as the rest of the ramp, but with about a foot and a half cut off. Faze 7 funded that, which is cool too.

The low section was killer for lip tricks of course and surprisingly good for airs. The locals were jamming 5 – 6 feet airs with rad variations from transitions which were way under-vert. Some even making 540s.

The turnout was good: about 300 people, most with their bikes. When that kind of quantity are gathered together by one ramp it’s a LOT of bikes. The platforms had to be cleared as lip tricks were to be expected. Talking of lips, the stickers were out in force. There are some happening zine stickers these days. So much so that five minutes after the jam the lip was completely stripped of all but one type of sticker.

Something’s Happening, Bro’. It started at Crawley and it’s building up speed. The bike riders of this country are getting clued in. They’ve stopped expecting somebody else to organise their lives and they’ve started doing something for themselves. The Invert Series of half-pipe jams run by Tim Ruck and Greg Guillotte are already off the ground and there are more in the pipeline. Nick Philip went down to the Faze 7 ramp at Chingford to see what was going down. And so did a LOT of other people.

And away we go. To see what Nick’s up to now, take a look at these magical T shirts at the Imaginary Foundation.

• Surf Ski, Coventry
• Gridiron, Nottingham
• Stamyps Skates, Birmingham
• Cheshire Skateboard Centre, Northwich
• Skate Zone, Torquay
• Mycyles, Malvern
• TnB, Tiverton
• Scotby Cycles, Carlisle
• Round Ocean, Doncaster
• Tombstone, Bristol

There’s also Matchrite, selling their jokes and someone advertising wholesale supplier of “Totally Radical Surf’n'Skate ‘T’ shirts now available!! Does anyone know who that was? Could it have been one of the great industry titans of the current boom starting business life in their back room?

I was really pleased when I turned the page and saw this. Strangely enough I was talking to someone last night about the history of Livingston and explaining how it nearly didn’t have a flat bottom in that original bowl.

Places to skate feature prominently in this Intro, which must have been done just before the big ramp at The Level was built, or maybe just after: Justin says they’re “going to put another foot of vert on it”. He also cites the ramp at Bourges “10′ transitions, a foot of vert and about 50′ wide. It’s got 20′ of basic ramp, then there’s a 4′ channel, then there are escalators down on both sides for another 8′, then back up again. And on one end there’s an extra 2′ extension so it’s about 13 or 14′ high.

And the skaters Justin rates in this Intro match that kind of terrain: Jason Jessess, the Godoys, Steve Claar, Craig Johnson, Jeff Phillips, Lucian, Jamie Blair and Davie Philip. So does his raddest thing seen: “Jason Jessee’s Christ Air to Fakie”.

By the way: if you’re reading this and know the history of Pig City you might be interested in a comment posted in July 2009 about trying to get the Pig City Shop going again.