Essjays and Cromer Sports were long-term advertisers. Essjay is still around (I believe and hope), but what of Cromer?

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…

This was the Christmas issue, so advertisers splashed out on bigger-than-normal ads, or switched to colour. Bike City did both with this page which seems to have a touch of the M-Zone about it. The two shops were based relatively close to each other, on the southern fringes of London and must have been rivals…

Where did Fat Willy’s fit into all this? At the time their stickers seemed everywhere and therefore absolutely no part of the underground skate culture. Both this and the Boogie designs adverts may seem innocent enough now, but at the time they would have stood out like sore thumbs. That sounds very snotty, but at…

Ouch! Something of a sensitive subject… Here’s an example of an early New Deal Skate advert from the days when the shop was in the “In Shops” near Harrow and Wealdstone station, before they moved to the skatepark. And, yes: they were doing mail order right from the start, although the “HSC” name came later.…

Back in 1989 Airbourne Zorlac were premature in setting up their own distribution in the UK (run by the Abrook brothers). Now it’s becoming more and more common. Meanwhile those companies themselves are no-longer necessarily American owned as the skateboard business matures and goes global. Other adverts on this page are from Rodolfos, USAmerican Skates…

Billy’s and Off Beat Sportz often appeared on the same page. Both were solid supporters of the skate scene throughout these years, as was Superbike in Ilford. There’s a fascination is seeing these old prices as well as the restrictions imposed on the graphics by the technology of the day. That Superbike advert looks as…

For me this page is all about the Rollermania advert. Other UK shops and distributors often expressed strong views about Tony and Lou’s shop. It was a Bristol cult for many, many years during the dark ages and throughout the revival of skateboarding in the UK. There’s got to be a conscious irony about portraying…

In years to come Billabong were to have a major impact on the skateboard market, but at this point they were still seen here as a surf company. I cannot remember who was their distributor in the UK at this point and have no idea who paid for this ad.

This double-page advert UK from mail-order stalwarts, Rollersnakes, was a bold change from their normal format. They normally used smaller adverts to generate interest, but in this case they used two pages to list a full range in true home-shopping style. In 1989 the cost of trying to illustrate all those products would have been…