When We Was Rad: Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

“Three hearty young lads give the Moor Street Car Park their very best.”
I always thought that NCP should sponsor a “King of the Car Parks” series. But I doubt if they would have seen things the same way. In the grim damp cities of winter, car parks provided one of the few indoor places to skate. That curb looks well marked by careless hubcaps. Oh yes.
Top left is Jagger, top right = Whizzer and Peter Egan is bottom right.

Subscription adverts were always a weak spot in the magazine. They were more the publisher’s thing than ours. But we had to come up with some comment. This was my favourite one because it combined two things: the feel of a suburban room full of magazines, stickers and posters and another attempt to explore space and perception with a camera (just waves in space). The idea was based on David Hockney’s ‘joiners’ – which had and have huge resonance for me. The room was Simon Evan’s home in Morden. From left to right are Marc Bultitude, Simon himself and Matt Stuart. And now these days Matt Stuart’s pictures also have huge resonance for me. And so do Simon’s (Check these earlier Simon Evans pictures too).

Now we get down to some words, at last. In this case I can’t be quite sure who wrote them. Probably me, but I’m not quite sure. The theme of ‘space left over’ by the planners is one of my pet themes, but “you get the feeling that you’d be mugged by the environment before the human villains got to you” reads more like Gavin. The captions certainly look like Gavin’s work — but they would have been done separately, and often in desperate rush by anyone who could be press-ganged into doing it.

Prince Charles is probably bumming and so are the skaters: they have enclosed part of Birmingham’s Central Library Square and built a poncy modern shopping precinct. Whether the architecture fits in with the Victorian surroundings is debatable, but there’s no question about the skate effect: that area is wrecked. Continue Reading »

Jovial Jagger, Crucial Christian, Bustin Benny and… who? After all these years we’ve corrected the missing name-check for Egan on the last page, courtesy of Jagger. Who can help out with the skater featured top-right here, please?

These are the features which mattered most to me. My obsession was always with getting out into different places and covering different scenes. The roots of R.a.D magazine date back to when I was working in a skateboard mail order company and dealing with skaters scattered all over the UK — often in the remote places (Tayvallich…). Out of that came the guide to skateboard places which started in the seventies and lives on in Knowhere and out of it came Radmag.

Another Scene Birmingham Days

This month we went to Birmingham and found a bustling street scene and radical sports. Look on…

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.

This run of pages seems to be a real Gav fest. The much-hated Ricky Spangles, a.k.a Spangleski had finally been buried, probably as a result of reader pressure. And pressure closer from within the team as well, I suspect. So here we have “Harry Hardcore”, Gavin’s nod to all those who could tell (and the telling was important to them) who was and who wasn’t a real skater. Have things changed? Maybe all those ‘was’ should be ‘is’?

Sod off! Sod off! Sod off! There, I’ve said it, that’ll show em. I always hated that Spangleski twat anyway. You wouldn’t catch me at any bloody show business party, not me. Nooo-waay! I’m out there on the streets skating my nadgers off. Street’s where it’s at, and don’t let any vert bastard tell you otherwise…

The story comes to an end. You get to tug Titus’ ponytail. You have won the 1991 Munster street competition. It’s all true…
Actually, it’s not — it’s a dream. Tony Hawk won street as well as ramps that year.
I’ve just read through this and noticed “(???check names???)” near the end. It made me smile and pause to think of Gavin, or was it me, making a note to consult with everyone about whether these were the right people to mention at this point. I was about to delete it, but then I checked the printed magazine… Sure enough, we didn’t cut it out. It’s there in the final piece. “Caption goes here…”

In your second preliminary run you begin to make an impression — you become the one who did the silly things “Gosh, what stark-bollock stupid things he did in his silly but stylish hat.” Your skating will have been of an acceptable standard — no better and no worse than anybody else — but you stood out, you have an identity: the skater in the silly but stylish hat who did the stark-bollock stupid things.
The judges saw 70 skaters today, but they remember you. You entertained. You got noticed. You’re in the semis tomorrow.
That night, play the part of the “nutter”. Go to nightclubs, dance on tables; steal a bike and ride it through the railway station while being chased by guards. Endear yourself to all and sundry.
You’re there: Sunday 21st July The semis aren’t until the early afternoon so have a lie-in, sleep off the hangover and then saunter down to the hall. About ten minutes before the semis start someone will come up and ask what music you want for your two runs. Casually take your cassingle out of the your Walkman and say “play side A of that, please”. This will look cool, but you will be acting clever. A credible, clap-able chart song is ideal for your coming runs. The German crowd will clap along to it and probably half-mouth the words as they’ve been hearing it on the radio for the last two weeks solid.
In the first semi-final run you will be skating well: you are doing your trick-list, covering the course, and, after your antics yesterday, the judges and the crowd will have become endeared to you. You must not fall off, and you must go fast and flow. Your railslide variation will get a cheer from the crowd. “Gosh,” the judges will think, “he’s not just a loveable guy, he can skate as well.”
Run Two: Your finish gets a loud loveable cheer, the new railslide wows them again, but the thing you did on the quarter-pipe gets them off their seats. When you finish, run out like you’ve never made that trick before. Smile from ear to ear, and wink at the judges as you leave the arena to cheers.
The crowd are on your side: you are a tatty nobody with a silly but stylish hat, they liked your music and they liked your skating. The judges are on your side. You’re in the final.
Take a break, get away from all the hurly-burly — go and hide in the toilet. Imagine you’re back in the swimming pool. You’re coming up for air; you’re floating high into fluffy pink clouds; you’re on in ten minutes.
Go to the DJ and tell him that for the finals “Oh, just play side B of the tape, please”. That sounds really cool: he likes you, too. The “Black Arabs” Sex Pistols medley is something special for this, your special moment. It will appeal to both the funkers and the punkers alike. Few will have heard this version, but everybody will know the words, and, boy, can you clap to it.
Finals. Run One: You’re on it, this time you’re on it. The new handrail at the end hits the hall like an orgasm. One more run and you’re there.
Last Run: This is the clincher. Everyone wants to see your three new tricks. They love them. Let them know they’re coming: stall for three seconds before going into each of them. But what’s this? Right at the end you fall off! Huh? Matt Hensley didn’t fall off…
But you go straight into the two new dork tricks you learnt the other week. Uproar! The crowd go ape! He’s such a cool guy! They want to marry you! The judges want your children!
You throw your silly but stylish hat in the air. You have won Münster. In 30 days you have become the world’s greatest street skater. Ed Templeton, Andy Howell, Ron Allen, Frankie Hill and Matt Hensley (???check names???) all carry you shoulder high.
You go up to collect first prize. You give Titus’ ponytail a gentle tug: it’s real — it’s all real. A tear comes to your eye. You’ve done it. The world’s a better place.

“Who he?” they think… I feel really bad when faced with captions with no names. I can’t put a name to him, sorry (help?). The location looks like Fairfield Halls in Croydon.
Interesting to note the coy: “f***ing”. We didn’t normally used asterisks. We didn’t normally use words which might have needed them (although the readers were allowed more freedom in the classified adverts). I was always pleased when parents and the like were offended by ‘bad language’ which wasn’t actually there. It meant we had managed to get the tone right. Asterisks would have meant we were unable to sound right without relying on specific words. Mind you, sometimes we mucked things up.

Prelims: Run 1 — Do the tricks you learnt off the videos, leaving a few of the more difficult ones out. Smile a lot. Cover the whole course. Run 2 — Do the tricks you learnt off the videos in a different order and include the more difficult ones. Also something stark-bollock stupid, eg start by dropping in off the bank to wall and finish by Ollieing a barrier into the crowd.
Semis: Run 1 — Do ALL the tricks you learnt off the videos, plus your new railslide trick. Run 2 — Do ALL the tricks you learnt off the videos. Concentrate on flatland stuff. At the end do your new railslide trick followed by your new quarter pipe one.
Finals: Continue Reading »