I’m not sure if the site is working or not at the moment. Comments seem to be playing up. But it would be useful if someone could add one (they work for me, but not others at the moment)… Thanks.
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Rude remarks about where to skate in Birmingham
I love the caption on the picture here: “Birmingham Wheels’ Finest”. The endless fear of being rude about any skate spot, on the grounds that it might be all the local skaters had, meant that most of the time the Where? guide was painfully neutral. Not so the contributors. “Take a broom” says the comment about the old council skatepark in South Ockenden (which can still be read in the Knowhere version of this guide, even though the park is long gone.
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About that break…
The couple of weeks turned into something a bit longer. When I came back I discovered that this site had developed a glitch which meant that I could not log in to approve comments, let alone add new posts.
At last I’m back in. I hope to start adding new pages soon.
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Guide to UK skateboard spots, as they were in 1988
This is the one part of R.a.D Magazine which lives on as more than just a memory. It moved on line in 1994 and can still be found at www.knowhere.co.uk although the content is very different now.I see from the introduction that we introduced a new rating system with this issue of the magazine. There’s a wistful tone to the observation that few people would expect to travel more than 10 or 20 miles to skate, and that no ditch could ever rate 5 stars. In the old days (the old days then) some of us used to travel from one end of the country to another in order skate something like Monk’s Ditch. Or, more to the point, to skate with other people at Monk’s Ditch.
What would the skaters of 1988 have made of the situation 20 years later? What would the skaters of 1980 have made of it? I think only the skaters of 1978 would have dared imagine a world of mini-parks all over the place and mega parks dotting the land. We got what we longed for. How does it feel?
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Taking a break
I’m taking a couple of weeks off now. In the days of the magazine I would have had to prepare a load of stuff in advance in order to be able to take a holiday. I found myself thinking that I ought to do the same with this blog. Then I thought “that’s too much like work”. And this is not supposed to be work…
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Vallely on Vert, Mountain in ‘Birmingham’ and Guerrero Where?
The curse of captioning strikes again. That doesn’t look like Birmingham to me. But maybe my eyesight is failing!
This page marks the end of the monster coverage of the Powell Tour of 1988. Looking back on it, I think we went over the top: there’s 11 pages of it. That was huge amount in the days when the magazine was only 56 pages thick. But we were into this kind of thing. It was exciting. It was an event in the days before there were any stadium-type skate events in Britain.
It also involved getting out on the road and sharing in the atmosphere at a whole load of different places. That was very much more a R.a.D mag type of thing than any big centralised competition.
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Mike Vallely R.a.D T Shirt and Pig City Skate Shop Adverts
The shot of Mike Vallely at the South Bank skating in a R.a.D shirt certainly catches the eye… Those T shirts were completely over the top.
But the PC’s Skate shop advert is significant too. I think there was some fuss over the use of the ‘Pig City’ name in this context, but it’s a very dim memory. What’s nice now is to look back at these pictures of Mark Collins, Justin Ashby, Andy Binns and John Mitchell. Brighton was and is a very special place.
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Steve Caballero, Southsea Skatepark, 1988
The words on this page are about the rain that plagued the Latimer Road demo, but the pictures are of blue sky and sun over Southsea Skatepark as Steve Caballero makes excellent use of the tombstone on the ramp. Photo by Paul Sunman — who took time out from Slam City to act as the driver and coordinator for the whole tour.
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Zorlac Mark and Barry Abrook Advert
Two of my favourite skaters grin out at us from this Zorlac advert.
Mark and Barry Abrook were at the heart of British skateboarding right back to the Andover days. In fact, I think that should be “Thruxton Days”, but that was before my time. They go right back.
This advert was to promote their joint (I think) signature model “Limey Bastards from Hell”. Someone let me know, please: have I got that right?
