So much from this era has survived. Death Box evolved into Flip and soared to success. Their original wunderkid, Alex, is also still very much around as well. Their determination paid off while others eventually fell by the wayside. But all of this did eventually involve both parties in trips to the States, after all.
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Calendar of UK skateboard events for 1991
Oh here is one for the historians and completists out there: a list of dates for skateboard competitions in 1991. Although I personally disliked all the competitive stuff, I was very keen on the idea of sharing information and pages like this seemed important to me. I think many other people thought they were a complete waste of space.
This was at a time when the notion of skateboarders and skateboard events within the Soviet Union seemed very novel and so I would have been particularly delighted to list those.APRIL
27-28 Kharkov, USSR: Slalom
28 Botley, England: Bowl and streetMAY
18-19 Dublin, Ireland: Squeez AES Street & vert
18-19 Riga, Latvia: Street, mini, slalom & freestyle
25-27 Various, UK: Santa Cruz demo tour
25-27 Milton Keynes, England: Leisureworld ramp demoJUNE
1 Leigh on Sea: Bowlriding
1-5 Various, UK: Vision demo tour
22-23 Livingston, Scotland: Pure Fun Weekend
28-30 Leningrad, USSR: Slalom
20 or 23-4? Turin, Italy: Slalom, downhill, freestyle
Date? Bulgaria: Street & freestyle
Date Charleroi, Belgium: Street, vert?JULY
6-7 Swansea, Wales: Vert
7-14 UK, Various: Powell demo tour
13 Southsea, England: SUAS vert
14 Shrewsbury, England: Mini, vert
18-21 Münster, Germany: WM Street, vert, freestyle
24-27 Le Grand Bornand, France: street, vert, freestyle
Date? Antwerp, Belgium: Nike Air Attack
Date? Paris, France: Trocadero mini?AUGUST
24-26 Coventry, England: Vert
31-1 (Sept) Hombrechtikon, Switzerland: SlalomSEPTEMBER
7-8 Saratov, USSR: Slalom
Date? (End of Month) Austria: AESOCTOBER
25-27 Copenhagen, Denmark: AES FinalNOVEMBER
23-24 Switzerland: AES
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Don Brider — Desert Island Skateboarder
Don Brider was already a legendary part of the British skate scene when this was published. And still is, I believe. I’m really pleased to see this and to be reminded of him. A few days ago I had to visit Farnborough. So much seemed to have changed. I couldn’t even really be sure I had worked out where the ramp had been. And, sure enough, there’s even a new council ramp-park-thingy nearby. I wonder if they appreciate the part their town played in keeping skateboarding in the UK alive. Don was very much part of that world, even though he’s from Southampton.
This makes me smile.Skate Legends don’t come much bigger than Don Brider, sardonic wit and ruler of Southampton’s streets. Don’s all-pervasive influence has helped make British skateboarding what it is today, giving it that distinct slant which is the very antithesis of the mellow Californian style foisted on us in the seventies. We also have Don to thank for keeping the spirit of British deck manufacture alive in between Benji Boards and Death Box — any surviving examples of the “Softcore” boards he made with Mark Abbott must surely be worth serious money by now.
Don still lives in Southampton, where he divides his time between running Wear and Tear clothing, house-training Greg Nowak, and providing a stream of firm but fair constructive criticism on the skate scene. If anyone deserves an island all to themself, it must be Don — but what would he take with him?The Board: I don’t know if you can just say a name like “Davross Model” or something like that for the deck. At the moment it would be the tramline six inch nose with fourteen wheel-base and six and three-quarter tail with a roundish tail, nice un-log-like nose tapering towards the back, with an H Street concave.
Or I could get the jig-saw out… Ooops: desert island — no jig-saw. OK: a Goff street or a Chris Miller. Trucks: just Indys. Wheels: 97, has to be — with a nice slide. It’s hard to name a brand, they’re all made in the same place anyway. Round ones.
The Skate Spot: That’s so difficult because there are things about everything I like. There’s Hastings mini-ramp, which is so rad — just like the first Farnborough vert ramp. Then there’s Dead Rabbit’s Ramp, which I had a big hand (cue joke) in. Then bits of streets everywhere. This is so hard (ooh, er). OK: I’d have Dead Rabbit’s ramp because it’s my baby and I know it would last — but probably kill me.
The Video or Film: You’ll not let me have home videos, will you?* Maybe “Some Like it Hot” because it’s just an all-round nice picture and because ‘being over 25 makes a girl think, you know’. Films are really such a throw away thing once you’ve seen them two or three times… But, yeah: “Some Like it Hot”. I don’t know what that says about me as a person… you decide.
The Person to Session With: It seems now that a lot of the time we all skate alone, even when we’re in a group. That may not make sense to some — but older skaters may understand the glimmer of a thought there.
Is this where I put in the Rob Able “who’s nicked my sarnies” quote? No. Well, I’d go skating with Greg Nowak then, but he trams so much I’d probably go into a coma. You get stoked on everyone really: not just one person. Oh, except GAZZA!!! Wow, foota!
The Record: A record is just that: a record of a live performance, or that’s what it should be. I’m glad you said ‘record’ anyway instead of ‘CD’ because, as usual, money kills everything and now profit hungry people kill the record in favour of the beer mat. Cure, Smiths, Cocteau Twins… oh, so many to choose from. OK: ‘Waterloo’ by Abba, because I haven’t played frisbee for so long.
The Book: Of the film? Well, it has to be my Garfield collection because his character is so rad. The cartoons on tv are crap because of the voice they used. OK, I admit I only read skate mags and the junk mail Sean Goff sends me, so I’m really uncultured, mate! Want a fight?
The Luxury: A girl Friday? No, you said no people….. Um…. A cardboard cut-out of Alex Moul to pray to? “Alexi Moul, Alexi Moul, he’s got a sphincter like a volcano hole…” No, for real: a telephone which I never have to pay for, so I can talk to people I care for and not have to panic about some profiteering bastards ripping me off, and my cat “Robert Smith” because everybody wants to be a cat.* You can take what you want, as long as it’s printable.
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Sketchy Skates and Yah-Dude adverts plus South African skate company
Sketchy Skates and Yah-Dude were two of the hard core of skate shops at this time. You’ll find their adverts scattered throughout the issues on this site. I’m struggling to remember what happened with Hi Ramp. Like all the companies trying to make skateboard equipment outside of the USA (or California, really) they would have had a real problem even getting a toe-hold in the market.
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Platform views close Goshen Comp report
I wince when I look at this. You can scarcely see the pictures. Look at the results, though. So many names which still seem familiar: this period produced some legendary skaters.My, Wingy has definitely improved and was skating really well. In the picture he’s doing a varial tail-grab. He did plenty more: mellies to fakie, long feeble grinds, big Indy air (wearing a big helmet).
Mike Manzouri skated fast and smooth with frontside rock-slide, backside lipslide, killer nose bones and, as you can tell from the picture, big melanchollies. Unfortunately Mike was so stoked by Jocke’s skating that he wacked the coping too hard with his board in applause and broke his truck. He had to borrow Laja’s board for the rest of the final. Mad. Neil Danns went very high and very fast and was very good. Frontside hand-plants, rad stalefish and this weird kind of Christ air to tail thingy. He got fourth place.
The picture I’ve chosen of Rocker is a 360° varial to fakie. He got a well deserved third. He did a lot of tricks, leaving you thinking “I didn’t know he could do that…” But he could. He did nose grinds, tail grabs, mute to fakie, fakie 360° Ollie one foot, mellies to fakie and a lot more.
Yeah: that’s a rad picture of Jocke. A backside nose bone, isn’t it? Jocke’s name was a name on everyone’s lips that weekend because of his big, big backside Ollie tail grabs, backside nose grinds and method air to fakie. And yes, he does McTwists. Jocke rules.
Pete Dossett won, and not a soul complained. He skated so well with mind and leg bending tweakness. He’s the best vert skater in England, easily stalling inverts for so long, tweaking airs this way and that, doing 360° varials, doing body varials, basically just doing so much. Oh my God: he nearly made a 720°, landing then falling off. So rad.
The competition finished, people collected the prizes Death Box had donated and even the mini was sessioned. Everything ended so fast. But so what? So long…
RESULTS
Under 16
1 Sean Ward
2 Carl Shipman
3 Chris Hudson
4 Dave Ashton
5 Warren McReady
6 Jock Milne
Over 16
1 Pete Dossett
2 Jocke Olson
3 Rocker
4 Neil Danns
5 Mike Manzouri
6 Wingy
7 Andy Williams
8 Stuart Hoyle
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Pictures from the Goshen Ramp Comp in 1991
Economies of style? No: economies of layout. One of the spin-offs of experimenting with shooting high speed colour print film (instead of the transparencies normally used for magazine work in those days) was that we could take four of the machine prints from the chemists, stick them together on a bit of card and count them as one picture. So we could get four pictures onto a page using half our normal “two scans per page” allocation. Honest. Those were very different times.
Justin Ashby, Pete Dosset, Andy Williams and Sean Ward are the skaters featured here.
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Goshen Gallery — skateboard ramp competition 1991
Simon Evans wrote this report on a competition in Goshen, and pointed out one of the favourite themes of Rad Mag: “the words are just a trick to make you look at the pictures” (to paraphrase David Byrne or Brian Eno).
Hello, and welcome to another comp report. I guess you’ve probably already had a look at the photos dotted around the page and now, in a fit of depression and despair, have decided to sit down and look at the boring part: the words. So let’s talk about the pictures instead.
You may have already noticed that although the comp took place at the Goshen Leisure Centre in Bury, there aren’t any photos of skating on the mini. Yep, something happened that hasn’t happened on British soil for a while: there was a vert contest.
The stage was set: Bury, indoors — on a very wet (hailstones) Sunday in March. There were two sections: the under 16s and over 16s. The surprise of the event was the under 16 class. Take a look at that picture of Sean Ward doing a rad fakie stand-up grind to fakie. Sean has to be one of the most dramatically improved skaters around, plucking amazing tricks from the air for his competition runs — trickery like fakie to nose-grind tail grabs, manual rolls, frontside one-foot tail grabs and lip slides. He skated really solid and certainly deserved to win.
What about that picture of Carl Shipman preparing to go to tail with this backside melanchollie to tail? Carl got second in the under 16. He skated really well, making fakie one foot tail-grab and alley-oop backside Smith, doing everything smooth and clean. In third place was Chris Hudson. He could have placed higher, but fell off a few times. From his bag of tricks came chink-chinks, melanchollies, Ollie blunts, ollie nose-stall tail grab and he came real close to 360° varials.
The over 16 section saw some real good skating, as you can probably tell from these photos. Some people didn’t do as well in the results as they did on the ramp, mentioning no names (Davy Philip). In the fine tradition of comp results, I’ll work through them in reverse order. Stuart Hoyle surprised everyone with his relaxed and fast antics, pulling newest deals, smith grinds, nose grinds and G-turn lipslides.
Check out that rad picture of Andy Williams doing the frontside nose bone. Andy had some real rad stuff, but couldn’t get it together at the end. But he still did some rad stunts like half-Cab Ollie blunts, nose grinds, feeble grinds, Madonnas and fakie 360° Ollies.
Justin Ashby does good relaxed frontside rocks. He skated fast, shooting around the masonite jungle. Oh yeah: everyone liked his shoes.
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Premium Phone Number Competition 1991 style
Spooky coincidence time. As I write this post the scandal about premium phone-in numbers being used for ITV competitions which have already closed was raging — hot on the heels of a similar fuss over at the BBC. Back in 1991 things were simpler and competitions like this were only just starting to appear. There weren’t millions involved (certainly not in the case of R.a.D Mag) then either. In fact I doubt whether anybody ever responded to these: they seemed completely out of place.