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Warren Brown, City of London, March 1991
Centre spread picture (these mattered in the days when they could be pulled from magazines and stuck on the wall) of Warren Brown by Jay Podesta. This was a golden age before the skateboard potential of the City of London had really been recognised. As its popularity grew, so did the busts. Perhaps somebody can…
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Practice alone, Practice by night
Weird caption: “Practice alone, Practice by night, with friends by day. Practice will make perfect”. More to the point: who are the skaters in the pictures? The first is at Harrow Skatepark, no idea where the second one is. No photographer is credited, which usually means that I took them, but the second one doesn’t…
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Rollersnakes, Off-beat and Skateshop Nini skateboard mail order adverts
The most interesting of these, for me, is the Skate-shop Nini advert. Rollersnakes and Off-beat are still very familiar names, but what’s the story behind a shop from Belgium advertising in a British magazine? The geography of skateboarding was different then and there was even less of a notion of ‘Europe’ than there is now.…
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More on how to become the world’s greatest street skater
In which Gavin introduces “The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle†— another primary source… Day 15: Saturday, 6th July Stop skating. Find a pool with water in it and swim a few lengths. Immerse yourself in the deep end, look upwards to the light or sky above and pop up for a deep gulp of oxygen. How…
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Get up and skate everywhere to the point of exhaustion
Ouch: this is so painfully close to the truth. The idea of having a carefully written out list of tricks to master was no fiction. My hunch is that a lot of people had such things. Their five year plan. Or one month in this case. As usual Gavin was writing about a deeper truth.…
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How to be the World’s Greatest Street Skater — In 30 Days!
This was one of my favourite Gavin Hills articles in R.a.D. In fact it remains one of my favourite pieces in the whole history of the magazine. Pure self-indulgence on my part… Gavin based this on Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty’s brilliant book, The Manual: How to Have a Number One Hit the Easy Way,…
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Smallroom Skateboards, Clan and SS20 Adverts
Small Room Skateboards… I have only the vaguest memories of them. Perhaps someone can help out with more information? Tony Buyalos and Donny Wilson are listed as team riders. Other adverts are from classic ‘skater owned shops’ — Clan/Poizone and SS20 with SS20 claiming the fastest mail order in the UK! The SS20 ad also…
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Overview of the Hamburg indoor skatepark bowl in 1991
This type of thing may have become commonplace by 2006, but in 1991 it was astonishing to see a skateboard facility like this in Europe. Captions: Main pic: The mouthwatering overvies of I-punkt’s new bowl. Left top: Soren Aaby gets aquainted with hip movements. Middle left and right: Danish local and Ryan Monyhan unable to…
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Hamburg Skatepark, 1991 style
Jeremy Fox wrote the words and Davy Van Laere supplied the photographs for this story about a pioneering indoor wooden skatepark in Hamburg. Holy Hamburg, Batman! It’s the Patron Saint of Skateboarding Europe now has one of the raddest indoor wooden skateparks in the world. The new facility is in Hamburg, Germany. Jeremy Fox took…
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Split Sports Advert – Manchester skateboard shops, 1991 style
Move along now: nothing to see here. I was about to go off on a rant about how cheap those delivery charges are, but in fact the 2006 equivalents are probably less when you allow for inflation. I don’t think anyone was charging extra for delivery to the Highlands, Northern Ireland or other islands back…