When We Was Rad: Skateboard History from UK Vintage Magazine

If you’re interested in the history of skateboarding in Britain, this site contains original vintage UK skateboard material from the eighties and nineties which originally appeared in R.a.D Magazine.

This is an exercise in skateboard nostalgia for old school skaters and a glimpse of the roots of British skating for historians and people researching street culture: part of the Long Tail for skateboarding in the U.K. There are also hints of what life was like producing magazines in the days before desktop publishing. Continue Reading »

I confess: I have nothing to say about this. At the moment I’m struggling to even upload the images — but I found this scan hidden away on an old computer, so I decided it deserves a better home.

Excuse me while I blow the dust and cobwebs off the file.

Now I understand why there’s been such a long delay in publishing this post. I had reached the contents page and could not face typing out everything that’s on here!

So for now, I’ll just list the items themselves:

• News

• R.a.Diation 7
• Steve Douglas 12
• Products 54
• Couch Session 58
• Diss-Communication 60

• Doing it in the Street 42
• Usage and Abusage 46
• Return of the Killer Mini-comps 50

• Fun for All the Family… (not) 16
• Curtis McCann Interview 24
• Intro 38

• The Return of the Nose Slide 30

The pictures are:
Greg Nowik ‘Flips out at Leigh’
Curtis Mc Cann’s board goes for a swim
Postcards from the edge — Llandudno style (Andrew Evans)

Now: what do I do next? Where does this go from here.

“Made tough and comfy for nocturnal activities. A size guage or color or feel to compliment any occasion: Being a smart ass to a Dennys waitress at 4.am. Impressing your friends by sticking your left ear to a mega watt thumping Cerwin Vega. A neuron firing sugar rush from ten too many raspberry blowpops. Getting frisked by some over zealous renta cop. Winding down watching endless cartoons. Made in Los Angeles CA and available virtually knowhere.”

‘Clobber’ = not a good name for a clothing company in the age of Google, but probably fine in 1992, a couple of years before such considerations became vital when choosing a name.

More than this I cannot say. I have no recollection of who was distributing this in the UK. Can anyone add to the history, please?

Steve Martin did “The Jerk”
Eddie Murphy was “Delirious”
Richard Pryor didn’t know “Which Way Was Up”
but these orginal pranksters can’t come close to the new King of Comedy…

The Franz

Ronald “Franz” Knigge, touring in your home town soon…

This is a great example of a New Deal advert from a golden age. It took me a while to work out which company was running the advert. Which amuses me now, when I consider that I ended up working for them for eight years. But that was in the future when this advertisement appeared.

Move along now. There’s nothing more to be said here.

Yeah, right. Not a good start to this classic issue, but there we go. And I’ve only just now got the point of the headline. I don’t think I would ever have looked at it so closely when it first appeared!
I’m sitting here thinking if there’s anything to be said about this. And I’ve reached the conclusion that there isn’t.

Let’s move on.

Curtis McCann, legendary skater. The Shell Centre, legendary spot.

Coming up in this issue we’ll also see another legend, the Plan B video and also a few more infamous elements such as the experiments with early video-frame-grab technology and the free cover-mount R.a.D keyring. Including those three things in one sentence is some kind of joke. One of them was a world-changer, and it certainly wasn’t the keyring. Or the frame-grabs.

The cover lines for this issue:

• Curtis McCann on the Underworld
• New cyber style
• Tekno tv issue
• Fresh high speed sequences – frame by frame action
• Plan B Video review – best yet
• Holiday movies – North Wales, Scarborough
• Milton Keynes & Leigh on Sea comps
• Free lucky keyring

The strap line (not sure if this was the first appearance) was ‘Brain Food for Street Thugs’. But there’s also “Rebel Against Drudgery”, so this aspect of the cover was probably still evolving under the earnest guidance of Gavin Hills.

I’m glad that we’re finally able to go through one of the ‘larger-than-A4’ issues from the last period of the magazine. I really liked that era. The skating was pushing the limits in all manner of directions at that time and Curtis McCann was one of the defining skaters of the age.

I’m certainly no expert on vintage skateboard companies, so I’m not quite sure where this fits in, but what we have here is a Santa Cruz advert promoting a Natas Kaupas deck which includes the “Santa Monica Airlines” logo. Perhaps someone can help out with the details of the relationship on that brand to various skateboard companies over the years? I have a vague recollection that it’s a complicated story.

On a simpler note the three other decks featured here are from Rob Roskopp, Claus Grabke and Jeff Grosso.

Those last two are skaters who both had a direct impact on Rad Magazine at various points.

Claus Grabke’s multi-talented and prolific approach included photography, writing and music so he contributed to the European skate scene and the magazine in a very direct way.

Grosso’s influence was less specific, but he was one of those fascinating people who influenced the magazine through his words as well as his skating. He struck chords which resonated strongly with the spirit of the time.

Hills Skates in Muswell Hill were a long time advertiser in R.a.D. but I can’t remember a great deal about them. The Bauer Turbo Roller skate which features so prominently here encourages my notion that their background was in eight wheels, not four.

I’ve just noticed one point of interest here:

Mapled Blank Deck with Concave, Blue Stained and Varnished 30″ x 10″ £14.95

Blanks in 1988? That would have been a very early example of a phenomenon which I normally think of as coming along later.

Or have I got that wrong?

Skate Paraphernalia from September 1988:

Motobilt and Rannalli trucks, Schmitt Stix Chainsaw and Chris Miller decks, Dog Town Micke Alba deck, a Swatch pouch and a Stussy No 4 T shirt. But my favourite thing here is the custom skate badge from Ian Walker in Doncaster.

Meanwhile for everyone interested in vintage skateboard decks, look at these beauties from the days when shapes were different. Very different in the case of the Schmitt chainsaw! Interesting to note that 33″ was considered a longboard at the time.

“To Remain Underground and Exclusive is to Resist the Mainstream
Therefore This is Not an Anarchic Adjustment Advert”

It may seem unfair to place so much emphasis on the Anarchic Adjustment advert here when there are also ads from Glasgow stalwarts, Clan and Mach in Edinburgh, but I saw Nick last month for the first time in a decade. So this is very topical.

In the early days of R.a.D there were two of us sharing a single desk in the corner of someone else’s office. Nick defined the future of R.a.D just as much as I did. And he’s still at it: as his blog puts it: “Somewhere Something Incredible is Waiting to be Known.”