The issue closes with a Speed Freaks video advert. At last. It’s been a long slog working my way through this fat edition of the magazine, and I’m starting to have doubts about the virtue of posting every single advert up here. For the time being I will carry on with the same approach for…

This is one of my favourite adverts of all time. It produced a roar of delight when I first saw it, and it still does. One of the earlier publishers of the magazine complained of a Volkswagen advert offering free badges to people who might otherwise be inclined to steal them from cars that it…

As you may imagine, it’s normally very hard finding anything to say about most of the adverts. The editorial team had nothing to do with them and usually only saw them when the magazine came out. On rare occasions they struck chords which resonated with the editorial of the magazine — and this was such…

The ‘Skater Owned Shops’ group got together to take a double page spread of adverts for Christmas and wen to town. Stampy’s was the famous Birmingham shop at the Wheels Park which went down in flames later, although some of the people who worked there went on to open the long-running Ideal in the centre…

In amongst the usual suspects there are some intriguing rareities in this page of small adverts. The Angel Lights Planetary Skatepark was the wonderful (and infamous) indoor Glasgow park, more commonly known as “The Church”. It had a short but brilliant life and lives on in legend, but we never gave it enough coverage. Meanwhile,…

Metal ramps were never my favourite thing, although I was over-enthusiastic about metal surface on wood construction at one point. This was at a time when local authorities were just starting to take a vague interest in providing facilities. Things have come on a long way since then. I’m still amazed and delighted when I…

OK. Step up to the challenge: what’s interesting about this page of adverts? For me: Bod Boyle skating the big ramp at Hastings makes the Backyard advert stand out. He doesn’t look too happy in this shot. As for the rest: MyCycles plugged away at it with an advert which looks like a faxed layout…

What better advert could you run at the end of the Irish story? Lance Mountain, looking like one of the nicest people in skateboarding. A moment of calm…

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…

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.