When We Was Rad:
Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Lots of stuff about places to skate in this section. It was an obsession of a time when skateboard facilities were still very rare and just before the era when they would seem redundant. Now they’re everywhere, but necessary again when skateboarding is being forced off the streets. It all comes in waves…

LEICESTER

You can’t win. Leicester used to have a killer street spot at the Crown Courts until the council demolished them to stop the skating. At the time there was some talk of providing an alternative skate spot. Nothing much happened, but the council did agree that local skate shop, Rollersnakes could build a mini-ramp on a roller-skating area in the playground in Weston park. The result is a good-looking mini, with an interesting elbow quarter pipe off the side — and a chain across the flat bottom…
It’s insurance again. (more…)

Vernon Adams, I salute you (and that’s him modelling the Hot Tuna beanie). The products page was always a difficult one for us. Most consumer magazines are all about selling objects of desire, but we were not. In the seventies Skateboard! magazine had set out down that path, with Dave Goldsmith writing technical pieces about urethane and so on. Steve Kane continued the tradition with the reincarnation of that magazine and when that came to an end the sacred Durometer actually passed to us. But it was the skating, not the equipment which really interested us and so we had a struggle getting excited about new graphics on decks. Vernon put a lot of work into each month, and we kept fiddling around with the format (colour this time), but the products page always seemed to stand out as different from the rest of the magazine.

NEASDEN GONE

London’s just lost it’s hottest unofficial skate spot. The empty open air swimming pool at Gladstone Park in Neasden has been filled. For years this huge expanse of smooth, smooth concrete was the ultimate semi-secret spot in the south. It’s fame spread throughout the world as visitors came, couldn’t believe their eyes, sessioned and went home babbling incoherently. Even now the pictures they took home are beginning to appear in American magazines.
As time went by the numbers skating went up and up, but apart from accumulating litter and one bit of graffiti which appeared late this summer, this activity was kept as discrete as possible. Relations with the parkies were just about workable: every now and again they would turn up and go through the ritual of throwing everyone out, but that was about it. Who knows? Maybe they recognised the positive side of a disused facility turning into one of the most popular attractions in the park?
Then disaster struck: a young kid drowned in the water which had accumulated in another empty pool (fat chance of that at Gladstone Park). (more…)

This month we heard about Sean Goff getting involved in SS20, Jeremy Fox getting back into the USA and Andy Ruffell getting more involved in running big events — all omens of things to come. Closer to the time were hints about a skater-owned distributor setting up near Southsea (the Abrook brothers, I think) and references to yet more things going on in Dundee.

BSA AND SOS TIE UP ’90 SERIES

The Skater Owned Shops syndicate are putting their money where mouths are. They’re finalising a deal with the BSA to sponsor a series of vert competitions next year. There should be six events between March and November, each one at a ramp near one of the SOS shops. Clan will back one at Glasgow, Soul Skates and Off the Wall would go for Liverpool/Manchester (Danzi’s got the Docklands Comp ramp), Stampy would take care of Birmingham, and SS20 would bring the festival spirit to a traditional venue in their area. An event at Southsea could well be backed by a Skater Owned Distributor (!) leaving only Swansea to be sorted out. (more…)