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Wurzel in Antrim 1989
Rare that we were able to devote so much space to one story, but the extra advertising in this Christmas issue allowed up to spread out a bit, and this feature certainly deserved the space. Captions: Will you Follow? Wurzel’s second visit to Ireland. Antrim. One of the skaters featured here had appeared on the…
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On manoeuvres: skaters and the army, Ireland 1989
The picture at the bottom right shows an army patrol in the background of an otherwise typical scene: skaters using any shelter they can find to session in the rain. Then within five minutes the heavens opened and down poured a man’s rain. We retreated beneath a small bandstand since the situation was hopeless and…
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The sound of a bandwaggon rolling towards us
Think Extreme Games, Brummie Style. Or even Urban Games. These people had the right (or wrong) idea, but a few years too soon. I can remember shaking my head privately over a similar event in the London Docklands and thinking “it will never work”. Just shows how little I knew then! I always seem to…
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Never play near parked cars
The “never play near parked cars” caption was a reference to a world in which they sometimes exploded. Captions: Never play near parked cars, and certainly don’t do Ollie Blunts like Geegee outside Clive’s Gene Ollies at Clive’s ramp.
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Gavin Hills on skateboarding in Ireland in 1989
Only the double act of Vernon-and-Gavin could have handled this for us. Gavin seldom got the chance to address his bigger themes head on in R.a.d, though he was always true to them whenever he could sneak them in. There is nobody else I would have trusted to attempt this — certainly not myself. Sheryl…
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Wurzel at original Meanwhile I
No idea who Krakatoa were, but that’s certainly Wurzel. I’m not entirely convinced that I have the location correctly identified as Meanwhile Gardens in its original form.
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Essjays Adverts and others Christmas 1989
Essjays and Cromer Sports were long-term advertisers. Essjay is still around (I believe and hope), but what of Cromer?
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Custom Riders, not just for Xmas
The advert that stands out for me in this lot is Custom Riders with their prophetic “we’re not just for Xmas” line. No, indeed: they’re still around 17 years later, when many others are history, like the magazine itself. But oh, what a different time that was. Simpler? More authentic? Or were we all just…
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Inter-skateboard prejudice?
The conluding page of this story about the meeting point between freestyle and streetstyle skateboarding includes the plea: “How’s the public going to accept us when most skaters won’t even accept a form of skating?” But who wanted to be accepted in the first place? The divisions within skateboarding are just as much about establishing…
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The freestyle end of things, 1989
This was the freestyle aspect of F.I.S.T in evidence: the type of thing which disappeared from view over the next few years. Hands involved, not just feet. Taking in the longer perspective, from the seventies onwards, that seems to have been one of the fundamental movements in skating. Hands gradually stopped being used to hold…