When We Was Rad:
Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Category: Issue 67 September 1988

  • Wasrad on Facebook?

    If the world is fleeing into Facebook then I guess I had better try to take this inside those closed walls…

  • Intro: Mark Findlay

    Interesting to notice that Fids nominated Stevenage as his favourite ramp even though he came from Ramsgate. That’s a sign of the times: he had to travel into London and out the other side to skate it. His answer to the question “What would make skating better?” — “Better weather or more indoor ramps” touches…

  • Latest Simon Evans Show

    I always was a fan of the Simon Evans currently known as an artist.

  • Don Brider, Dirty Ditches and a 1988 email address

    In this selection of letters we have Mad Snoz and his cohorts writing about Dirty Ditches, but where? Livi Skates thanking everyone who came for Pure Fun Partying on the Isle of Wight Vallely on vert (lots of it) at Latimer A Picture of Don B and our email address from 1988 = Telecom Gold…

  • Back in the Day: vintage skateboard shop adverts from 1988

    Off Beat Sportz take the prize this time for their “We Like Cats and Dogs Price List” tag line. What was that all about, then? Action Ramps deserve some other kind of prize for breaking down the humble jump-ramp into a whole series of components. Meanwhile Youngs favoured the “long copy” approach, Split went for…

  • Simon on Chrome Ball Incident

    God bless Google alerts for bringing a smile to my face today: good to see so many people remember Simon Evans on Chrome Ball Incindent.

  • Free skateboard classified adverts from 1988

    At some point I knew I would run out of interesting things to say about “The Wall”. That moment has come. It was intended as the Craigslist for UK skateboarding of its time and delighted me when it turned into Myspace. But I’m stretching things too far again. Time to shut up!

  • Street Contest from Munster 1988

    Interesting bits in here… The overview of what we described as ‘the streetstyle device‘: state of the art at the time was: ‘Bank, quarter-pipe and mini-handrail all in one unit.” Now you see things like that all over the place. They’ve become a standard item in public and commercial parks. In 1988 this seemed like…

  • R.a.D Sticker Rides Again

    Somebody sent me a link to a picture showing Tony Hawk at a 2008 Retro-contest, complete with a R.a.D sticker on the ramp and Mike Manzoori filming in the background. But I can’t find it now. Most strange.

  • Eric Dressen, Tommy Guerrero, Jeff Hedges: Munster 1988

    Oh dear. Back in the days before desktop publishing you did not know what things would look like until you got the magazines back from the printers. Unless you could afford proofs, which we could not. So the yellow tint behind some of this worked OK, but the magenta one makes it impossible to read…