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Dundee Factory Skatepark Competition 1989 (Part 4)
In an era when big stadium skateboard competitions were confined to Munster (as far as Europe was concerned) and skating on TV was non-existent, this Dundee event was a typical event. The non-competition skating and the social side of things were more important than the organisational details: More people joined the session, having grasped what…
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Dundee Factory Skatepark Competition 1989 (Part 3)
Skate and Meditate The line up of teams included notables Team Team, Team Omelette, Boils n’Warts, D.H.S.S. (Dundee Hardcore Skate Squad), Team Manic (England/Scotland), Factory Sensibles, and Angel Lights (A & B). The street and ramp team competitions were to be on Saturday, with the individual over and under 16 street and ramp events on…
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Vision Streetwear Advert November 1989
Vision Streetwear were the shoes which defined one brief era in British skate fashion. They never really crossed-over into the fashion mainstream here and so stayed an identifying brand for skaters and BMXers. In the USA things were different, I believe: they started selling in mainstream shops and provided an early prototype for the whole…
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Dundee Factory Skatepark Competition 1989 (Part 2)
The inset photographs show Davie Philip (caption: Tailslide from Mr Philip — you can assume this covered yards) and Snoz (In a traditional contest nose stalls to fakie would have rated higher). Main picture is of Chimp, I think, and someone I can’t identify. The more I look at this picture, the more I like…
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Anarchy Skateboard Jam in Dundee
We clearly couldn’t make up our minds what to call this report on the 1989 skateboard competition at the Factory in Dundee. There’s a reference to jam in there (Dundee is famous for “jute, jam and journalism”) as well as yet another line from the film Performance (“time for a change”) and in fact the…
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Skater Owned Shops Adverts November 1989
This is an interesting example of the original Skater-Owned-Shops group getting together to buy a page of colour advertising, I think. Or maybe it was a Billy Brown idea to create a special page for them. SS20 and Clan were in for the long haul, representing Glasgow and Oxford. Stampys in Birmingham and Off the…
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Skateboard Classified Adverts November 1989
I don’t seem to be able to find the file containing the text from this lot. Now there’s a relief! Of course I reserve the right to retro-fit it here one day for the sake of completists. I’ve just glanced at the form for submitting entries and noticed that we insisted that you had to…
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Skate City and Skateboard Gang Adverts November 1989
I’m intrigued by the “Skateboard Gang” (shades of Thrashing in that title) video. I know nothing about it. It wasn’t from one of the mainstream companies, and it wasn’t something happening underground in the UK. Our lines of information came from those two sources, most of the time. Anything outside of that seemed alien to…
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Whose Line is It Anyway? (Part 7)
The main picture of Jeff Hedges is by Claus Grabke. I wish we had run more like that now. Inset shows Mark Abbott and Shane O’Brien. This was the last page of a remarkably long feature. Too long perhaps, but it does provide an interesting sense of the skateboard culture in Britain back in 1989.…
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Whose Line is it Anyway (Part 6)
Paul Davidson at Bloblands (Norwood Park), just up the hill from the sad quarter pipe on the cover of Rollin’ Through the Decades and just down the road from where I sit writing this. Now stop for just a moment. Go back again and read that lot. It’s no more true than the first piece.…