When We Was Rad:
Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

The “never play near parked cars” caption was a reference to a world in which they sometimes exploded.
Captions: Never play near parked cars, and certainly don’t do Ollie Blunts like Geegee outside Clive’s
Gene Ollies at Clive’s ramp.

The conluding page of this story about the meeting point between freestyle and streetstyle skateboarding includes the plea: “How’s the public going to accept us when most skaters won’t even accept a form of skating?” But who wanted to be accepted in the first place? The divisions within skateboarding are just as much about establishing personal identity as the desire to identify with other skaters.

You do a 360 Shove-it to Fakie at South Bank and they don’t really accept it as a proper trick because you’re on a freestyle board, after all. I do a Blunt on a freestyle board and they say ‘What’s he doing that for? Freestyle boards aren’t for that.’ Skaters say ‘the public should accept us’ How’s the public going to accept us when most skaters won’t even accept a form of skating?

This was the freestyle aspect of F.I.S.T in evidence: the type of thing which disappeared from view over the next few years. Hands involved, not just feet. Taking in the longer perspective, from the seventies onwards, that seems to have been one of the fundamental movements in skating. Hands gradually stopped being used to hold on to boards, to drag on a bank or plant on ground or coping — but it was a very gradual move and for all I know hands are back.

Caption: Sam Lewis: Handstand Varial to Caspar 50/50
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There’s too many laws in freestyle. The idea comes across that if you’re a freestyler you have to skate on your own. You don’t use banks. Some people think you shouldn’t do Ollie tricks. All these rules come across.

Captions:
Sam Lewis materialised from Southend, did Varial Inverts and lots of other things, made it all look easy and surprised the lot of them

Does Darren Walker fall off skateboards? Infrequently. Moving 360 Finger-flip
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Chris Howell was a freestyler who organised events under the “F.I.S.T.” banner (Freestyle In Street Terrain). As the caption said:

On banks (good), Kick-flip Ollie (good), on a freestyle board (could you hold on while I take a quick attitude check on that please?)

This was a slightly uncomfortable period as people who had called themselves freestyle skaters (a very small band) suddenly saw their type of skating cross over into the mainstream, but under a different name and with a slightly different approach. Most of the photographs in the rest of the article place the emphasis on older-style freestyle, with hands involved as much as feet and wheels only to a lesser extent — but this one would fit happily with the sessions from the future.