W
What I saw in September 1984 wasn't
quite as unbelievable as what the aborigines
saw. What came before and what followed
were closer than the canoe and the
Endeavor, but it was a major leap into the
abyss of a different dimension.
In the 1960s surfers in California, practic-
ing the modern version of the waveriding
Cook saw in Tahiti, found something to do
when the waves were flat. Taking the han-
dles off pushcart scooters, they began to
ride the boards themselves, standing up as
they would on a surfboard. Sidewalk surfing
was born. The intention was to simulate
surfing on concrete. The fad spread, there
from the top, going upside down (the inverted
handplant, first done by Bobby Valdez in
1978) and doing higher and more intricate
trick variations. It was a far cry from cruising
down the sidewalk.
By the end of the 1970s the decline had
begun. The bottom fell out of the market,
and the fly-by-night opportunists dropped
out. As with most trends, the majority of
people moved on to other amusements:
BMX bikes, rollerskating, breakdancing.
Poor design and astronomical insurance
costs eliminated most of the skateparks.
The craze imploded and got passé. It wasn't
the cool thing to do anymore. For a second
piphany
the public was concerned.
were contests, and it was on the cover of time, skateboarding disappeared as far as
Life Magazine. After a couple of years,
skateboarding's popularity drastically
declined. It got to be considered too dan-
gerous. The composite clay wheels were
too sensitive. Skateboarding went under-
ground for the first of many times.
This cycle of rise and collapse was to
be repeated. In the mid-1980s there was
another upsurge, followed by a downturn,
then in the early 1990s the street skating
revolution [smaller boards and wheels,
the ascendancy of the ollie (popping the
bookstore with my friend, looking at maga-
zines. After leafing through the usual Car and
Driver, Cartoons, Mad, and Cracked, I picked
up a Skateboarder Magazine with a blue cover.
By this time no one was skating in our town.
It might have been the last issue of
Skateboarder that made it into that store. The
magazine had glossy color photos of people
who didn't look very 70s riding wide boards,
doing tricks that were inconceivable to me. It
looked exotic, and something about the
skaters and the graphics on their boards was
creepy and slightly subversive. I'm not sure
exactly what did it, but the two of us were
convinced. We got religion. We were going
to skateboard again.
At first we just had our old skinny boards,
which were about 7" wide. We got my
friend's mother to drive us to the skatepark in
Boulder, 35 miles away. The park had a huge
keyhole-shaped pool and various bowls. It
was across from a bowling alley, in a desolate
field by the highway to Denver. A world we
board into the air without grabbing it) as had no idea existed revealed itself to us. 10"
at Mecca
HEN CAPTAIN JAMES COOK SAILED INTO BOTANY BAY ON APRIL 28, 1770, his
Endeavour was undoubtedly the first vessel of its kind and size that had ever been seen there.
Some natives in a canoe passed within a quarter mile of the ship and didn't look up. A group of
men onshore watched disinterestedly when the 106-foot, three-masted collier anchored near shore.
The leader of the scientific expedition on board, Joseph Banks, observed a naked woman onshore
with three children. "She often looked at the ship, but expressed neither surprise nor concern.
Soon after this she lighted a fire, and the four canoes came in from fishing. The people landed, hauled
up their boats, and began to dress their dinner, to all appear-
ance totally unmoved by us..."
by Jocko Weyland
Considering how huge and otherworldly the craft was compared to a
canoe, the speculation is that it was too bizarre and monstrous to be under-
stood. The natives treated it like something supernatural, hoping that if they
ignored it long enough it would disappear.
If something as unfathomable as the apparition of that ship was to the
aborigines comes into view, what is the reaction? Is it ignored, reacted to
with fear and fled from? Or with exhilaration and a rush to make contact
with the unknown? What happens when the shattering of the usually immo-
bile plane of reality is witnessed firsthand? Does the mind snap with
bewilderment, or does it manifest a joy in instant understanding? There is
no luxury of easing into it, no gradual buildup. Just a violent progression.
into the future, in less than a second.
In 1973 a Floridian named Frank
Nasworthy perfected the urethane skate
board wheel. They were faster, longer last-
ing, and much more resilient than the clay
wheels. A little later precision-sealed bear-
ings came into use, a marked improvement
over the crude loose-ball bearings that had
been used previously. It was an immense
technological jump forward. By 1975 skate-
boarding was back in the public eye and get-
ting more and more popular. Kids all over
were seduced. Every kid wanted a skate-
board. A lot got them. Skateboarding's
image was closely linked to California and
surfing. The appeal was worldwide.
Equipment was much better all-around than
in the 60s, and besides slalom and riding
on streets, people began to ride backyard
pools and schoolyard embankments. A wave
of construction driven by the desire to cap-
italize on the reborn fad beget hundreds of
skateboard parks with
snakeruns, bowls, halfpipes,
and the all-important pro
shop, with skate goods for
sale and a few primitive
the prime trick ingredient] pushed skate-
boarding forward into the limelight, with
heavy influence exerted on fashion and
graphic design. There were new magazines
and another movie. What comes around
goes around. No matter who is paying
attention, there will always be a core of
maniacally possessed skaters. It's undying,
perennial-exposure or not.
I started skateboarding after the fifth
grade, in 1977. The craze was an onslaught
that few could resist, and my friends and I
weren't immune. I got a GT Woody board
with clear red wheels. There wasn't a
skatepark in our town, but there were
paved roads, parking lots, and tennis
courts. I remember a contest at the local
Holiday Inn with a slalom course and an
announcer, girls in cutoffs and layered
wide boards with pink and green wheels with
names like Gyros and Bones, skaters doing
the tricks that were in Skateboarder. There
were locals who were ripping: Vince, George,
Jack Lovell (the smoothest skater I've ever
seen), Billy Fox, and Billy Wolfe. They had an
aesthetic that was so different from the dazed
and confused Led Zeppelin reality we were
used to, it was shocking. What would now
be called an early punk/new wave look. A
tall spectacle named Bart was the dean of the
group. His bleached hair, cut-off leopard print
shirt, and black girlfriend lounging at pool-
side made a deep impression. Once I saw
him fall, causing a large clump of snot to land
on his arm. He licked it back into his mouth.
They were all unlike any clique of teenagers 1
had been exposed to. There was something
rebellious about them. Culturally revolution-
there will always be
video games. There were a core of maniacally
possessed skaters
magazines, movies, and a
travelling show called
Skateboard Mania. It was in
advertisements. Farrah
Fawcett was photographed
smiling and profiling her
feathered hair while riding. It was massive.
Skateboarding techniques and tricks made
leaps and bounds. Vertical (pool riding) was
the main emphasis, and pioneers like Tony
Alva and Jay Adams took to the air above the
coping (the rounded lip of concrete jutting out
at the edge of the top of the pool) with the
first aerials. Blasting out over the top, grab-
bing the board in the air, pivoting 180°, then
landing back on the wall and continuing to the
other side. People started rolling into pools
hair riding tandem, and guys with longer
layered hair. It was a classic scene of the
1970s, one that could never be recreated,
despite the nostalgic efforts of hindsight
aficionados of that decade.
After a year or so, I had moved on like just
about everyone else. My skateboard was
neglected in the garage. We lived in the
Rockies, so skiing was the primary activity. I
got a BMX bike. A year or two went by. At the
end of seventh grade, I was hanging out in a
ary is what they were,
whether they knew it
or not. I was mes-
merized. They, along
with the pro skaters in
the magazine, became
my heroes.
Back in our
town, we got sub-
scriptions to
Skateboarder and new
modern boards and
safety pads. We skated the roads, sidewalks,
and even the slanted flagstone on the walk-
way by my house. We built primitive ramps,
leaning pieces of plywood against sawhorses.
I spent an inordinate amount of time lying
on my bed with a board on my feet, pretend-
ing to do skate moves.
As time went on, my friend and I went our
separate ways, and he turned his back on the
skateboard scene. I got a portable wooden
halfpipe from an old-time skater and rebuilt
60 THRASHER