Wigan 1989. Backside ollie and a stinky frontside air.
Loved that ramp! The coping was gnarly… All rusted and pitted painted silver. .It used to growl.
And (((echo))) when slapping yer tail down… Split my head open on that yellow and blue wall
The ramp was in a roller-rink… a big cavernous place with all the roller skaters whizzing round and round anti clockwise to the pop hits of the time. ‘Buffalo Stance’ by Nenah Cherry I seem to remember being played a lot.
It would close at about 10:30pm then we would drive back to Blackburn and hit the convoys around the acid house partys that were happening at the time. .
Good times. Still got a board but don’t roll too much nowadays.
@konmavridis that’s a great photo! I’ve never done anything but get wrecked on noseblunts.
@dee rad! there was a vert ramp at an indoor park near where I grew up but I did not skate there often enough to do anything but pump the bottom half of it.
When we bought our house last year I put a tiny quarter pipe in the garage, after two injuries killing most of my summer this year I built it out into a little micro skate park to make sure I get to skate all fall and winter. First line in the finished garage, filmed this morning: https://www.instagram.com/p/CGxl4KojhK3/?igshid=4vo2vpeau3rd
I’m not in this vid but this is my mates that I skated with everyday for a good few years and some bonus footy from some bigger spots. We all came from a small seaside town, skating was heavily frowned upon, I loved being an outcast. Skating in the 90’s was great, was so underground, anywhere you went you had instant friends caus you were skating…happy memories.
Good idea! I stopped skating the last time I broke my wrist just trying to Ollie up a curb. That was the signal my time has come. (Over the years skating, I’ve broken both wrists twice, both ankles twice, one time snapping my foot OFF, blew out my left knee)
But I dream of skating all the time. Every time I hear wheels rolling around I get the bug so bad! Aging really hurts. My hay-day was the bones brigade days. Bones Brigade Video Show
Anyways enough rambling…I’ll dig up some old skate shots.
That’s the first deck I ever bought. Original release Steve Steadham.
That was a great watch, thank you! Based on clothes and boards it looks like the era I started in, extra nostalgia points! I always consider myself a late bloomer because I did my best skating from 25-30 rather than when I was a teenager.
I kicked longboard all over one of the flattest towns around for like 15 years and then I stepped it up a notch on the shred-o-meter. I tried regular skateboarding but found myself just cruising… never got any sweet tricks down
This is my favorite post that I’ve come across here in a while. Thank you. I started skating in about 1983 or 84 as a kid in a small town in Kentucky (upper Southeastern United States). It was my savior as someone who didn’t fit in anywhere. I would relate 15 miles to the nearest larger town (Lexington) before I had a car, just to participate in the skate scene there, which was all street. It gave me a community and was the only group that so identified with throughout my adolescence.
I sustained an injury that took me better than half a year to heal from and by the time I was able to skate again I had moved on to playing music and finding another community.
Skating has once again become my go to activity for exercise during pandemic, and has also introduced me to a whole crew of forty some odd year old skaters that I get to socialize with distantly at the skate parks here in Lexington.
I got started again after watching videos on YouTube with my 2.5 year old son, who is very intrigued. Watching with him really opened my eyes to all of the awesome and welcome changes that have taken place culturally in skating as well. It’s a joy to watch more women and people of color tearing shit up.
It’s the thing that I look forward to the most almost every day. Other than making music and hanging with my kiddo.
Cool, I was never anywhere near their standard but they certainly helped me improve quick.
We were all baggy clothes hip hop haha.
Well done, it’s certainly a lot harder the older you get. I hadn’t been out for 7 years and had a few sessions this summer. It was great fun but tough going as well. Great fun just hacking it through the streets though!
RAD Thread @Odo !!!
Mike Crum messaged me the other day, said he ran across some old footage of me and Jon Comer.
Need to go get that tape!
I got a few more photos somewhere too
I love getting asked to DJ at 4DWN skatepark. This time we used this crazy Jambox system, Darren Navarrette seems to be diffing my track selection and left handed smokes
Extra points for classic concentration gurning.
Making me all nostalgic this thread, best years of my life were spent with a board nearby. Jumping on the train to Romford and skating down to the concrete park at the weekend, having a chicken and mushroom potnoodle and a marathon while watching old guys shredding the pool, then going home to watch a well used copy of Streets of Fire or Hokus Pokus.
I’ve got nothing to contribute other than my support for this thread. I was more interested in smoking cigarettes and talking shit than actually becoming good at skating. But I loved watching people who were awesome at it, skateboard videos, all that jazz. Gave up the skateboard and cigarettes. The shit talking, not so much.
After reading this today I visited my niece and nephew and funnily my brother said how I skated over 20 years ago. Got a go on their board and did some basic tik taks and cruised about. Felt good and just weird I was talking about skating and then got on a board for first time in over 20 yrs straight after
Loving this thread! I miss skating. Too many knee injuries (from work, not skating) to do it in a real way anymore but I get out and cruise around a few times a year.
In my teens (90s) it was illegal to skate on the streets in my home town so it usually involved running from the cops. Haha good times. The first gig I ever played was a benefit to raise money for a skate park. We have one now and it’s pretty good. Mostly bowl, pretty big vert.
Few things consistently put a smile on my face like seeing kids out skating.
We had the first halfpipe for miles around built in our town. Must’ve been around 88, when I was 7. You had to have a helmet to skate the ramp but I didn’t have one and wasn’t getting bought one. But we had this old american football helmet lying around and the dude at the park said it was legit. So I used to skate the ramp with my american football helmet on and get tons of abuse from all of the older kids and I didn’t give a shit, I was so stoked to be skating the ramp
