When We Was Rad:
Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Month: April 2006

  • USA American Skates, Everything at Your Leisure plus Wheels and Waves Adverts

    Everything at Your Leisure were one of the pillars of advertising in the magazine for many years. Wheels and Waves were skater-owned (I think), but I don’t recall much about them, I’m afraid. USA American skates were the subject of some debate elsewhere on this site!

  • Disconnection – Skateboarding in Newbury 1989 (Part 5)

    Photographs show Joe Millson at St Mary’s and two more views of the Great Bedwyn ramp. POST SCRIPT Death is a surprisingly ordinary thing, part of the every day routine for some people. The rituals, the routines, are tidily observed. Society exists to take care of these things. Bodies are removed, a bit of paper…

  • Disconnection – Skateboarding in Newbury 1989 (Part 4)

    Photographs show Martin Wager (not quite a local, I think) and overviews of ramps at Marlborough College, Joe’s Barn and Grant and Ross’ ramp. That last one an example of a traditional ramshackle home ramp… Overviews were important: facilities were rare and people travelled to skate these places — we needed to show what was…

  • Disconnection – Skateboarding in Newbury 1989 (Part 3)

    Pictures show Shane O’Brien skating Great Bedwyn and Joe Millson on one of his two ramps. Joe wrote the “The Bird, the Boy and the Bat” which apppeared in the Backdoor View feature in a later issue of R.a.D. A bloke in a black T Shirt with ‘Preshure Empire’ on it had come into Macs…

  • Disconnection – Skateboarding in Newbury in 1989 (Part 2)

    Pictures this page are of Chris Summers and James (no surname given, can anyone supply one now, please). Not much more to be said today, except that the sun is shining and I’m off to continue walking round the Capital Ring with Simon Evans. All being well, today we cross the river into South London.…

  • Disconnection – Skateboarding in Newbury 1989

    The M4 project was a follow on from the earlier “A1” feature (itself a sequel to “Northern Line”) — I’m serious! A1 had involved me and Simon Evans spending weekend after weekend travelling up and down the A1 documenting as many places as possible. To our shame, we only got as far as Washington —…

  • Airwalk Sean Goff Advert

    Good to see an advert made specifically for the UK market, from the days before shoe adverts dominated skateboarding mags (and paid my wages for several years, to be fair). I also have fuzzy memories of the Airwalk’s hospitality at American trade shows. Does anyone know who took the picture?

  • R.a.D Magazine Letters Page November 1989

    This letters page is from the period when Gavin Hills was in charge. The fine art of winding up skateboard magazines by sending them letters designed for publication was practised on us as well as Skateboard! The source of one of these is fairly clear. Meanwhile in an attempt to encourage people who weren’t quite…

  • Hot Wheels BMX Advert

    Hot Wheels stuck to their guns. Like Alpine Action trying to sneak skateboard adverts into BMX Action Bike, they ran their BMX adverts in a magazine which was crammed full of skateboarding. I admire them for it. What could you get for your money? Complete bikes like a Skyway Streetscene would cost £199 and the…

  • Skaterags, Essjays, Rampage, Backyard and Cromer Adverts

    Some fine shops were advertising here and some prosper to this day. Double page spreads of adverts were rare back in 1989, even at the height of that boom, but these days they’re commonplace. Funny to think of Essjay calling himself “old” in 1989. What does that make him (us) now?