When We Was Rad:
Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Category: Issue 67 September 1988

  • Munster Mash. Europe’s Biggest Skate Comp (1988, that is)

    What an amazing issue this was. So much stuff all happening in one month. This was the seventh Munster World Cup and Europe had never seen anything on this scale in the eighties. It would rate as pretty big even by today’s standards. And the quality of the skating would also stand the test of…

  • R.a.D Magazine Stickers and Billy’s of Cambridge Advert

    Sick Colours! Melt Your Eyeballs! Bright and Sticky! I hope Billy’s will forgive me if I dwell on the R.a.D Magazine sticker advert this time. This one honours the designer of the logo, and master of the spanked-up Xerox art, Nick Philip. That’s Nick’s face squashed on the photo-copier montaged in with the R.a.d logo.…

  • Not sure what’s happening

    I’m not sure if the site is working or not at the moment. Comments seem to be playing up. But it would be useful if someone could add one (they work for me, but not others at the moment)… Thanks.

  • Rude remarks about where to skate in Birmingham

    I love the caption on the picture here: “Birmingham Wheels’ Finest”. The endless fear of being rude about any skate spot, on the grounds that it might be all the local skaters had, meant that most of the time the Where? guide was painfully neutral. Not so the contributors. “Take a broom” says the comment…

  • Breaking again.

    I wrote too soon. This blog is still not at all well.

  • About that break…

    The couple of weeks turned into something a bit longer. When I came back I discovered that this site had developed a glitch which meant that I could not log in to approve comments, let alone add new posts. At last I’m back in. I hope to start adding new pages soon.

  • Guide to UK skateboard spots, as they were in 1988

    This is the one part of R.a.D Magazine which lives on as more than just a memory. It moved on line in 1994 and can still be found at www.knowhere.co.uk although the content is very different now. I see from the introduction that we introduced a new rating system with this issue of the magazine.…

  • Taking a break

    I’m taking a couple of weeks off now. In the days of the magazine I would have had to prepare a load of stuff in advance in order to be able to take a holiday. I found myself thinking that I ought to do the same with this blog. Then I thought “that’s too much…

  • Vallely on Vert, Mountain in ‘Birmingham’ and Guerrero Where?

    The curse of captioning strikes again. That doesn’t look like Birmingham to me. But maybe my eyesight is failing! This page marks the end of the monster coverage of the Powell Tour of 1988. Looking back on it, I think we went over the top: there’s 11 pages of it. That was huge amount in…

  • Mike Vallely R.a.D T Shirt and Pig City Skate Shop Adverts

    The shot of Mike Vallely at the South Bank skating in a R.a.D shirt certainly catches the eye… Those T shirts were completely over the top. But the PC’s Skate shop advert is significant too. I think there was some fuss over the use of the ‘Pig City’ name in this context, but it’s a…