When We Was Rad:
Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Category: Issue 67 September 1988

  • Mike Vallely South Bank 1988

    Top caption “On any bollard. Ollie 180 to Frontside Rock.” Bottom caption “360 Block from Vallely. Raging”. The combination of South Bank murk and our even murkier black and white printing makes these hard to follow and leaves this as a very weak page. I wish we could have done justice to the skating.

  • Mambo ‘More a Pair of Shorts’ advert 1988

    Here’s a Mambo advert which did not get us into trouble the Advertising Standards Authority and nor did it cause us to be denounced from pulpits. Some of their other efforts had those effects. There isn’t really much more to say about this, is there?

  • Facebook page anyone?

    Over on Facebook, someone has just suggested that I should create a page for this site. What do you think? When I added the reader survey it caused a drop in the number of people commenting here and it’s already too quiet in these parts. I don’t want to make things even quieter!

  • Steve Caballero and Mike Vallely: Stevenage Skatepark 1988

    The 1988 Powell Team tour was so rad. If you caught them you’re stoking. If you didn’t you will be: we’ve got the highlights of the official demos AND all the fun bits that went on in between. Because if you thought they just sat in some hotel room in between the shows you’re very,…

  • Tommy Guerrero at Southsea and Lance Mountain at Meanwhile 1988

    At the time of writing, Southsea Skatepark is under threat and there is a petition to save it here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/save-southsea/ The pictures come from a happier time, with the park under the supervision of John Thurston and and visited by all manner of legends, as we see here. This was the opening page of an…

  • Mr Whitter’s Latest

    I’ve just been watching Winstan’s latest film on a subject close to my heart: skateboarders creative use of public space. Once again the South Bank is under threat and the film assembles an interesting range of people to argue that the skaters are a more integral part of the culture of the area than yet…

  • Soft drinks companies in skateboard magazines

    In 1989 it was very strange to see a soft drink advert in a skateboard magazine. The idea of such a high-profile brand taking any interest in skateboarding was a novelty. There had been such adverts back at the end of the seventies, perhaps (Fanta comes to mind), but that was a long time ago.…

  • Paul Cheyne Coffin Drop-in Livingston 1988

    Livingston skatepark has always placed the emphasis on pure fun, rather than serious competition. There was a competition on this day, complete with judges, but at the end they announced that everyone had placed first. My type of competition. Events like this were also a great chance to print pictures of people doing strange and…

  • How Livingston Happened — footnote on the early history of the skatepark

    Bother! I wish I had the text for this page on a disk. Oh well, here goes. The part of this which I want to get on line is the side-bar about Iain Urquhart. He was one of my skateboarding heroes, as you can tell: How Livingston Happened So you think you’ve got problems getting…

  • Livingston, Banks, Hips, Bowl and Doubles

    Blue sky picture feast from the finest bit of British concrete at the time. I don’t know which makes me smile more at this distance: Davie Philip’s style or the pure-fun aspects of the other two pictures. It also suddenly strikes me that it’s been a very long time since I’ve been to Livingston and…