GLOBAL
SKATE
82
Caballero, bowl to bowl transfer at Livingston's Rock 'n' Roll park. Photo by lain
Urquhart
SCOTLAND; Caballero & McGill
UK Invasion Tour '82
If you read the last issue of this mag, then you obviously
saw the Eurocana Summer Camp article which featured
McGill and Caballero as the American Skateboard teachers
in Sweden teaching a summer camp designed for progressive
skateboarding.
This story takes us to the next part of their journey which is
to Scotland and England, the big and mighty U.K.
Mike and Steve were barely able to get one day's break
after the summer camp when they were rushed to the plane.
at the Stockholm Airport to take off for Scotland. They both
had a pretty busy week ahead of them, a week that you could
almost compare to a rock 'n' roll tour, considering all the travel
time, demo time, and meet the press time. Fortunately they
got a lot of rest on the plane, because the second they landed
in Scotland, they were hit with skate business. It was the site
of what was to be their first press interview. They were
greeted by one of many Scottish radio stations. After a brief
and successful interview. they were rushed off to see some
of Scotland's skateparks. Their hosts for the entire U.K. trip
were Dee and lain Urquhart, the heads of the Scottish
Skateboard Association, who, by the way, are some of
skateboarding's greatest prophets. Let lain tell you the rest.
Scottish Skate Prophets Dee and lain Urquhart at Lakewood.
Traditionally July is the "quiet month in the Scottish
Skateboard Association's year round activities: a time for
holidays, for a bit of relaxation, or perhaps for checking out
the skating scene elsewhere (England, Europe or possibly
even California).
That tradition suddenly ended in July, 1982, with the word.
that the SSA had somehow managed to arrange for Stevie
Caballero and Mike McGill to come for a few days in Scotland.
In no time the grapevine was carrying news of the visit and of
the special display that was being organized to mark the
occasion. Scottish skaters quickly re-planned their various
skate safaris to (suddenly boring) places like London and
Andover, and with a massive influx of foreign skaters from
Germany, Switzerland, Norway, France, Italy and neighbor-
ing England now all converging on Livingston's Rock 'n' Roll
Skatepark, the stage was being set for a memorable
international gathering
Meanwhile, over at Glasgow Airport, newly arrived Stevie
and Mike were being given details of our plans for their stay.
Radio interviews (one within minutes of their arrival on
Scottish soil), TV broadcasts, press previews, and so on. Oh
yes, and a big public demo in a couple of days time? Like true
professionals they agreed the lot, and did it all with no
punches pulled
After a quick look around Glasgow's veteran but still
thriving Kelvingrove Skatepark, which reminded Mike of
some early Florida examples, it was a fast 30 miles east to
Livingston (at an unaccustomed 85 miles per hour and all of
it on the "wrong" side of the road!) an our gueats' first
sampling of the very latest concrete skateparks to be built in
Europe. Although we arrived in mid-evening, it was
beautifully warm, the sky was clear and the park was packed.
The skating went on long after sunset. It was a great session
with almost three hours of run after run of the sort of radical
skating we had only previously seen illustrated in co second
snatches Perfectly executed back and frontside airs, flips,
lien airs, laybacks, handplants, all kinds of lip work and rocks
and of course several Caballaerials way above the lip. Not
only that but Mike and Stevie found coutless new lines linking
the halfpipe, the banks and the reservoir into one endless
terrain. If that was an eye-opener, the way they moved
between the shallow and deep bowls was mind-blowing:
massive airs over the connecting hip, acid dropping from one
to the other-variations, and their innovations, appeared
endless
The next day was again beautiful and warm and thankfully
so since this was the big "preview" day at Livingston for the
press and TV cameras. We had quite unashamedly set out to
use Stevie and Mike's visit as a means of really splashing
skateboarding (radical 1980's version) into all corners of the
local and national media to kill off any lingering doubts in the
public mind that skateboard had died with the end of the big
craze a few years back. Whether it was mere curiosity, the
excuse to spend a day out in the sun, or (we would like to
think) a response to our countless letters and phone calls, is
something we shall never know but the media turn-out was
fantastic, and the coverage exceeded all expectations. The
"serious," the large circulation, and the local press all carried
photos and stories and, even more valuable, the two main TV
channels put on prime time filmed reports showing some
superb action shots of Stevie and Mike skating Livingston like
it was their home park. Their patience and enthusiasm in
front of the cameras was quite something, especially when
asked to do the same maneuver again, for the fifth tirne!
Exhausted, we went back into Edinburgh (via another radio
station studio) to watch the day's action going out on TV that
evening and, as a special treat, gave the lads their first
viewing of a youthful Stacy Peralta starring in the old movie
"Freewheelin" (sorry, Stacy!), whose bank action stands up to
anything done today.
The plan was that the day of the demo would start restfully,
with a little bit of shopping and sightseeing. (Stevie wanted to
check out for himself that Edinburgh Castle was really built of
genuine stone and not the plastic blocks they use at
Disneyland). But instead the phone kept ringing. Urgent
requests for more photo sessions, live radio interviews, etc...
etc. The previous day's work, and particularly the spectacular
film on BBC TV had obviously made a big impact. For the first
time ever we found ourselves actually turning down
approaches from the media!
The demo was scheduled for a 7 p.m. start. With over 30
minutes to go several hundred people had already taken up
their positions. By the start time the crowd of spectators was
immense ("more than at the final of the Gold Cup-Stevie)
and the grassy banks all round the park were virtually
crammed with people standing shoulder to shoulder. The
action started in the halfpipe with everyone taking two or
three runs each, including four vertical roller skaters in the
team. Slides, inverts, massive airs, etc., and a perfectly
choreographed doubles roller routine all produced an
enthusiastic response. But this was just the warm-up. When
the action was transferred to the bowl, the crowd, by this time
almost embarrassingly large 1,500 or more, started to go
wild. The team in the bowl was smaller, and as the moves
became more and more radical and the pace even faster, this
was reduced further to leave only Stevie and Mike plus top
Scots Davy Philip, Graeme Stanners and, on roller skates,
Paul McCrudden. If the adrenalin had been flowing fast
before, it now started pumping wildly as everyone somehow
managed to move up into yet another gear to push the airs
even higher, survive crazy undiluted acid drops, land
outrageous olliess and hold incredible frontside rocks in a
torrent of extreme maneuvers (with hardly a wipe among
them) to the mounting amazement and spontaneous
applause, cheers and shrieks of disbelief of the massive
crowd
Any notion that the physical limits must have been reached
by now was shattered when Mike and Stevie added a further
dimension with a totally immaculate doubles routine: inverts.
ollies and rocks were performed barely a board length apart.
not just in unison but with inch perfect double vision
precision-and what about that amazing flying crossover!
And then to round off the show they took a series of
mind-blowing final runs, of the type that until then had existed
only in skaters' dreams.
The atmosphere was, to use that over-worked adjective.
quite electric. But you could really feel the total involvement
and concentration as the whole crowd, no doubt with many a
sweaty palm positively willed the pair of them to make every
(Top) Scottish castle made of real stone.
(Middle) The Livingston park layout. The halfpipe and bowl area are reinforced
by cement "rock climbing" wall. The stairs lead down to a canoe launch area.
Everything is available to the public at no charge.
(Below) McGill being interviewed for a prime time BBC-TV broadcast.