When We Was Rad:
Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

Cover of R.a.D Magazine November 1989
Arron Bleasdale featured on the cover of this issue, skating the pool at Rom.
Cover lines were:

Eco Thrash
Skating Goes Green

Dundee
Hardcore and Hooligans

Attitude Adjustment

Cover price was Â£1.00 and for that you also got a free Santa Cruz sticker. We loved the free stickers, but the distributors always wanted us to find some other promo item. The stickers just didn’t deliver as far as the newsagents were concerned. Probably because a lot of them were nicked. These days there are books about skate stickers of course.
March 21, 2006
Vision Streetwear Shoes Advert

Vision, not Santa Cruz, on the back of R.a.D magazine? These were strange days. No idea what was going on there. Interesting to see that one of the pictures is by David Walsh and another by Dan Sturt.
Vision’s history would be fascinating to read. This must have been around the time of the peak, complete with the monster warehouse the size of a block.
They touched on the development of R.a.d on various occasions, but always in a very oblique way. At Alpine Sports I can remember Pete Collins coming back from California with stories about buying stuff from a distributor who seemed to be very into Britain and drove some British sports car. Brad’s sister ran the Mad Rats brand which was one of the first small labels we brought over (I still use one of the bags). Steve Douglas and Schmitt began their business relationship beneath the Vision umbrella.
At a critical period they provided home and employment for the legendary Dave Currey. And of course, for a long time there was Mark Gonzales, whose skating and approach to life were a deep influence on the magazine.

March 20, 2006
Insane Clothing Advert

Ged Wells’ Insane Clothing was one of the defining features of the UK skate scene at this time. It always seemed to me that Insane was part of a very long and distinctive strand in British culture — one which resonated strongly with the spirit behind R.a.D.
Ged was also a huge direct influence on the magazine as a contributor, counsellor and critic.
One day I hope to have time to write more about how important this was.

[Edit: 10-03-2011 — But for now you should take a look at this excellent article about Insane Clothing ]

March 19, 2006
The Bird the Boy and The Bat by Joe Millson

Back Door View was a feature we ran for a while to allow space to publish various kinds of short pieces from new contributors.
Joe Millson was the skater who had the ramp near Newbury with one platform supported by an old car.
The hope was that providing a small space which did not have a defined format would attract more contributions — but filling it remained a struggle. It was a familiar problem at the time: a magazine desperately keen to find new contributors and readers who perhaps thought they could never get anything published.
Things may now have changed. The print magazines probably still struggle to find fresh contributors, but there’s no shortage of new writing (and lots else) flowing through other channels.
Yes, I feel wistful about this. If we could have just hung on a bit longer…

March 18, 2006
Skate Rags Advert

I have no idea who ran this advert for skate rags. Someone in Cornwall, judging by the area code…

March 17, 2006
Backyard, Essjays and Other Adverts

There are some real solid names in here: Backyard, Essjays, Round Ocean and so on.
The Angel Lights Planetary Skatepark (the famous Glasgow skatepark in a Church) were advertising at this point too. Other skateboard shops include Wheels Unlimited in Weymouth, Transition in Grimsby and Subway Skateboards in Hammersmith.
Somebody called NSW Mail Order was offering clearance decks from Vision, Santa Cruz and SMA from Â£30.95 and Matchrite were still trying to sell jokes by mail order.
This is a snapshot of a different era, with skateboarding just passing another peak in popularity: lots of small shops, but no High Street chains yet.

March 16, 2006
Birmingham NEC Skateboard Competition (Part 2)

Stadium skateboarding was a concept which was just around the corner, but at this point the idea of skating in a big venue was completely new to us.
The banked slalom course was the other major novelty here. In retrospect that seems like a glance backwards towards an earlier stage in the development of skateboarding — an attempt to recreate the very earliest forms in a competition environment. History shows that things took a different turn.
Photographs are of Paul Atkins and Neil Danns.

March 15, 2006
New Style [Skateboard] Comp in Birmingham

Banked Slalom is Rad

The Brummie NEC Skatemaster Airwalk Converse bash was a smart little affair tagged on to a supercross motorcyle type thing. Three days of assorted goings on left a good impression, and Dave Crabb as pucker prince and overall skatemaster: a title achieved by combining his position in ramp, street and — a blinding innovation — banked slalom.

Pictures (from top to bottom) Jim Thiebaud, Claus Grabke, Neil Danns, Pete Dossett, Anders Pulpanek, Lucian Hendrickse, Dave Crabb, Gerd Reiger, Mattias Bauer, Steve Claar, Lucian Hendrickse and Dave Crabb.

March 14, 2006
Double Comp in Texas (Part 2)

The pictures show ex-pat Danny Webster, John Fabriquer, Alan Losi, Nick Guerrero, Mark Roach and Craig Johnson.

Vernon’s report on the competition concludes:

MAlba turned up and systematically built up his runs in a crescendo for the final. A well thought out approach got him into 7th place. H Street’s John Sonner made this his only S.U.A.S appearance, left his mark and took 6th place. 5th was Bryan Pennington; this man obviously has someone guiding him on his Frontside Ollie to Smith-grind Revert over the channel, cause they’re divinely rad. 4th was Scott Stanton, straight edge and all the way from Pensacola Florida. He did a rad Ollie to Lipslide on the extension, rode down the transition with a wheel catching on the edge of the ramp and still made it. Third place left the Dane, Nicky Guerrero, with enough cash to pay for the car he had bought four days prior (again). Bod Boyle ended up in second again behind first Al Losi. The battle continues from the Southsea S.U.A.S through Munster, Docklands…

March 13, 2006
Double Comp in Texas, Arrests Imminent

This story is about two competitions, a week apart, in Dallas and Houston. Words were by Vernon Adams with pictures by his alter-ego, Jay Podesta. The pictures show (top to bottom) Henry Guttierez, Mike Crum, Stan Stanners, Mike Yousefpour, Blaize Blouin, Jeff Phillips and Bryan Pennington.

March 12, 2006