Another advert – and you can’t even read this one, so no chance of shedding a tear about prices in the good old days. At this stage many of the shops advertising in R.a.D were combining skateboards with BMX, a painful process for them as well as for the magazine. Since you can’t see the prices in this dot matrix advert, here are some examples:
Most decks cost £45, although some Santa Cruz ones were cheaper. Trackers were £16 but Indys were £13 and wheels were £6 or £7 each. Allowing for inflation, I think that means that equipment is cheaper now than it was then…
One response to “R.a.D Issue 58 Everything at Your Leisure Advert”
It was sometime in 1987 or 1988 and I’d been skating for a few months, mainly with my friend James Davis (a.k.a ‘Dav’, ‘unclesomeone’). I’d saved up enough cash from working in the village pub to buy my first decent set up and so a road trip to the nearest supplier of skate-goods, Everything at Your Leisure (EAYL) in Kidlington, was planned.
I’d got my first board from the 1987 Wind & Surf Show in Alexandra Palace, from a bloke I later discovered was the infamous Tony Coffey, someone I would work for about 5 or 6 years later. Anyway, it was the usual £40 set up – no concave, crap wheels, etc. I was pretty excited about getting a pro deck, and I think I had my heart set on a Brand-X Sean Goff model.
Originally, EAYL was just a counter located inside a small-town pound-shop. We’d been there once before and I was amazed how much Vans, wheels and even stickers cost. It was a pretty good shop though, and more importantly the only one we knew of in a 50 mile radius. So four of us piled into my parent’s aging mini, and my brother Sean agreed to drive us to Kidlington. Apart from my brother, ‘Dav’ (as he was then called) and me, there was also an American kid called Adrian. He’d taught us 90 degree ollies from the road onto grass verges or gravel drives, and espoused the virtues of Boneite at any opportunity. He was pretty annoying but was the only other skater we knew – they were few and far between in Gloucestershire back then.
We arrived at EAYL and it was clear that there’d been a change. The counter, which had previously been situated near the door, had been shifted back into a far corner of the shop and there weren’t many products on view. We were told that the guy who ran the skate shop had re-located to a warehouse in Lincolnshire to start a mailorder business. We were reassured that trip would be worthwhile as he now had every single product available.
We split to the carpark and had a decision to make. My brother was always up for roadtrips but Lincolnshire sounded a long way off. We actually didn’t really know where it was and only realised how long the trip was a few hours later. We hung around for a few minutes reading the latest RAD – the one where Gonz ollied the Meanwhile gap – before we decided that we’d brave the trip. Nevermind the fact that London was only about 60 miles away (I don’t think this even crossed our minds) we were going to drive to Holbeach, Lincolnshire, in search of a Sean Goff composite model. (I’ve just checked with the AA and this was a 220 mile round trip.)
So we got in the car and drove (or my brother did). Adrian annoyed us with his human beatbox and coke can drum machine for most of the journey and asked if “we were there” about 10 minutes after leaving Kidlington (I thought americans were used to long car rides?) and at 10 minute intervals thereafter. The mini trundled along at about 40 to 50 mph and we eventually reached Holbeach. It was a bit of a race against time, because although we arrived at Kidlington at about 10am (I’d be throwing stones at Dav’s bedroom window at 8.30am on Saturday and Sunday mornings in those days – to go skating, of course) we struggled to reach Holbeach by the 5pm closing time. (We’d actually phoned in advance and the EAYL guy had told us he’d pay our petrol if I bought a complete set up.)
Well we got there – a small warehouse in an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere – and the place was locked. So we sessioned the jump ramp outside for a while (early grabs, natch) and eventually the owner turned up. The selection inside wasn’t quite as promised, but was pretty good, and I ended up with a Vision Gonz, pink Tracker Ultralites, and all the plastics George Powell had on offer. We got our petrol money, too.
It was a long way back, and already dark, but I was already thinking about the pink and lime green striped grip-tape job I was going to be doing on that deck – boy, was it gonna be sweet!
Despite the relative profusion of skate shops that sprung up shortly after this trip, I actually went back to Holbeach to buy my second deck – a Powell Vallely. SS20 in Oxford opened shortly after, and these long trips became only distant memories. Might we actually get to meet Sean Goff, the UK’s No.1 skate and Airwalk poster boy? Well, that’s another story…