Skategeezer Feedback - Page 1

Yo Dude

No geezer here(denial sucks!). At 44, still cruising here. See!

Chris Yandall - 1976 Michigan Birmingham Pool and Grand Rapids Demo Ramp

230lbs downhill sAMOAn mpegs:| -1- | -2- | -3- | -4- |-5- |

My latest websites are at biz and hopefully if Larry Balma permits, TrackerTrucks.com.

Skating still rocks after all these years! My 9 year old son, still can't believe daddy grinds ;-D

Geezers rule [ cough ]

Cheers,
Chris Yandall

Mike, your history didn't mention the board I started on, predawn of clay wheels. It was a red stick about 16" long and 4" wide with steel wheels and rollerskate trucks. I wish I still had that board. Remember Simms bowl riders and Tracker trucks? The plastic bennett truck plates always broke.

Brad: 33 yrs old, 27 yr. vet.

Hey, Michael, you ever get a chance to skate at Skatercross in Reseda, Calif, or The Endless Wave in Oxnard Calif?? Just wondering, I'm an ancient from way back when also, same with my sis.

Well, if you get some time write back, Aloha, Scoot

Scott T.

Hi Michael, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only geezer still interested in boarding. The last time I skateboarded was back in the mid/late 70's, when bell-bottomed pants were the rage. Back them, our ramp consisted of an old table tennis board laid up against someone's front wall or coconut tree.( Bailing at 8' near vetical was not always fun!)

I'm now 27 and going through an early life crisis of predictability, being a responsible citizen etc. I want to construct a half-pipe either on a back yard scale of bigger but need some info on construction, e.g. wood used for the ramp surface etc. If you know of any links, please send them to me. Thanx for any help.

Mark S.

Hey Mike: Ya, I remember the 70's and even the sixties. My first board said hang 10 on the top of the wood deck and it had metal skate wheels. Try taking a high speed turn on metal and watch the sparks fly. I still have a pile of skateboarder magazines stashed away in the attic. A friend of mine and I were talking about skating the other day and I pulled out my old skinny stick. Bunger fiberglass kicktail with acs 500 trucks and Road Rider 4s'. We went to the nearest hill and impressed the hell out of the kids who were all riding those "FAT" boards the kids ride these days. His kid said he didn't think old (35) people like us could do things like that.

I am looking to buy a new fat board any suggestions. Keep skating; hopeto hear back from you.

Bob F.

Hey, I just found your history of 'boards when looking on the net for ramp plans. I started skating in the 70's too. I started on metal wheels. OH man, what a ride! We didn't have any hills so we used to pull each other behind bikes - then let go and have a blast or just see how well you could slolam. I guess that is why I got into water skiing so much. In the late 70's a park opened about 10 miles from my house. I got over there once but never got to skate it... I was still one metal and they weren't allowed. I wonder why ;-)...

Well in the 80's I got a real deck (P & P). Buy then there was one park left open in Mich. (that I knew of) and one that was closed and fenced. We used to jump the fence and skate for free... What a blast. Then I moved to Northern MI and had lots of hills. After cracking my deck I got another and keep skating the hills. Now I live in CA and want to get back into skating. Still got my boards and pads but now I got 3 boys ages 4, 2 and 1/4. I hope to get them into it some day so I want to build a ramp and get back in shape. Guess I will have to order some good plans.

TTYL,A. Powell
-- Yes that really is my name... & my Dad's and Grand Pap's and #1 Son
-- No, I had nothing to say about the board...
-- But hey it's REALLY COOL to go to a skate shop and lay down my Visa! You should see the looks!
D. Rice

I'm 34, started skating in the mid 70s and never gave up. Where Iskate:

70s - Skate City/Rolling Thunder/South Bank
80s - Crystal Palace/Rom Skatepark/Harrow
90s - Bracknell ramp/The Playground, CT, USA (1992)/Radlands, Northampton

Current set-up 1991 Insane vert deck (10", deep concave, long nose), Indys, 60mm wheels. I like the deck so much that I bought 3 of them in 1991 and I'm now on the third one.

What I skate: VERT, the occasional mini-ramp and more vert.

Claim to fame: learnt fakie ollies off of Bod Boyle (who was MUCHbetter than me), taught them to Pete Dossett (who then got much better than me) and had an argument with Lucien Hendrickse for spending too much time farting about with fakie ollies while he was trying to skate. Have found my kind!

I was net surfing and found out your web page! I nearly jumped up anddown with joy!

I am a avid collector & long-time skater since the "clay" age. I can remember my first board was a "Knight Rider"..a wooden deck with clay wheels that my parents bought for me at FAO Schwartz in San Francisco. I skated in my grandmothers driveway and promptly fell on my ass! That was back in 1974 and only the beginning!

Just wanted to drop you a line and say that even though I am now a 32year old career woman, I still collect boards, magazines, and other stuff..here'sa sample
  • Original Gordon & Smith Fiberflex with Tracker trucks and Road Rider2's
  • A "Roller Derby" wooden skate deck with steel wheels..built in the'50s
  • Santa Cruz long board (about 1977) with Lazer trucks and O.J.'s wheels
  • Powell/Perelta "Steve Caballero" with Indy trucks and Rat-Bones 85A's
    Great article in the skateboard FAQ. I remember that stuff! I was a Canadian (Calgary) 12 year old in 1976 and totally in love with skateboarding. I was lucky then, my best friend's brother had a huge ramp and then a wood half pipe to skate on.

    Now I'm a semi-responsible adult with a baby boy who still has the old gear (Santa Cruz board with Bennett Vector trucks and Z-Flex Jimmy Plumer wheels). Although I admit I only ride it about once a year now. I'm sure the neighborhood kids would erupt into gales of laughter if they saw that gear (although I hear there is some interest in the old gear --do you know anything about this?)

    I also read that "you know you're old school if..." on one web page and actually remembered most of that stuff! Anyway, it was interesting to get a flash from the past.

    Cheers,
    Jay N.

    Memories of Led Zeplin and the hester bowl series in Boulder Colo. In Denver in '79 my pals and I ruled the irrigation ditches of Montbello I had an Alva board and Gullwing trucks with red Kriptonics and a Santa Cruz with tracker trucks and green kripts that I used at the concrete curl in Aurora. I'm 33 now and yesterday I built a 1/4 pipe in my drive for my 10 yr old boy (yea right!) he was suprised how rad his dad still is even if "rad" isn't part of his vocabulary. I'm glad to know our generation of thrashers are still alive and kikin!

    Bob F.

    I enjoyed reading your personal history of skateboarding. We are contemporaries in that I began skateboarding in 1974. I started on urethane wheels and a plastic board and quickly moved up to a red Fiberflex with Bennet trucks and Road rider wheels. I had youthful aspirations of professional skateboarding but in Illinois best I could do was to do demonstrations for a local dealer in exchangefor equipment at wholesale cost. I used to go weekly to Surf & Turf skateboard park in Wisconsin. They had an excellent 12 foot keyhole with 3 feet of vertical. By the time I went to university in the 80's I wasbusy with other things but I have always taken the odd chance to go out and have a skate. Once a real skater always a skater. I am amazed that even in my 30's with so little practice I can still go out and do 180kickflips and 6 or 7 360's. Children look at me with wide eyes and tell their parents "look dad that man is on a skateboard".

    The one thing I can say about it all is that I have never broken a bone but I have seen many a friends leg hang oddly from their ankle. Today I would never survive unharmed from some of the wipeouts I used to have, but it is nice to dream of the time spent above the copping and the feeling of axles grinding on coping 12 feet above the bottom of the pool.

    Keep on dreaming.

    John L., Western Australia

    Hey cat... my name is Kevin Farley, and I'm an old geezer too! (29) and I've been skating since 1975, I grew up in longwood, fl (near orlando) and skated the beautiful cement parks in the 70's, we had one in my town called the Longwood Pipeline... man, what I wouldn't give for one more day there again!!!! I miss that place. I got to skate upland in 85 for a day, but that was during a time when I wasn't skating much :( but I did hit coping backside in the combi pool!! :) a scary experience... that pool is gnarly, bro!!! Hey, let's chat. do you have any back issues of Skateboarder mag? how about old boards? I'm trying to track down stuff.

    Dumb ass me, I had 76-81 skateboarder mag in the protective boxes with covers in mint condition and over the years, they got lent away, given, trashed, whatever, so now, I have one issue from 79 and one from 75, both pretty trashed (missing covers and such). But, life comes round again. Have you heard of Gravity boards? They rule. Go to WWW.gravityboard.com and check it out!!!

    Well, good to see your site. Good luck, and please mail me back.

    Kevin Farley, kfarley@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu

    P.S. I saw rodney mullen last summer at a Menace/101 demo in tampa and heruled!!!!!

    PPS Are you still ripping? Never quit, bro. I've watched 3 generations of lamerz quit on my ass. I'm going to skate until I'm 100!!! put it this way... Tony Alva still rips pools everyday at 39!!!?!!!! so I have no excuse. Later!

    I remember being one of the first little girls on the street with a nice blue plastic skateboard! YEAH.

    This was the summer of 75....then came the wood board and the best was theALVA board I got in 79--10 in., tracker trucks, Vans high tops, the real sh-t! Marina del Rey Skatepark, The Big O, and lot's of DEVO.

    Gave it up at 16 when I started driving and had scarred up knees. None ofthe helmet and knee pad stuff back then right? So now I am quickly skating down to my 31st birthday and I only watch but that's cool. Just trying to stay on my platforms is enough these days....just kidding.

    Dazed and Confused as ever! Michele

    You really took me on a trip down memory lane as I read your page! Let me tell you what London was like in '76/'77. You had to pay a FORTUNE for an imported copy of "Skateboarder", there was ONE shop in the whole of London selling "real" skateboards - Fibre-Flex, Logan's, Hobies, Kryptonics etc. (ask any old London skaters you know about "Alpine Sports"!), and the strains of a new kind of music filled the air as the Sex Pistols were played on the PA's at skateparks.

    Well, I say "parks", I really mean "park". By '77 London had one skatepark. It was in central London on the South Bank of the Thames and was called Skate City. It was far from Skatopia but it was the nearest thing we had! By this time I had dumped my "Skuda" (a seriously crap board for kids - your first boards sound much the same) and was now the proud owner of a Fireflex Bowlrider, ACS trucks & Yo-Yo wheels. Over here prices were VERY high - in the mid seventies this board would cost around L70 (about $140 in those days) and everybody dreamed of going to the States!

    The US magazines painted an image of sun, super-smooth mile long snake-runs, blue-tiled pools, pipes big enough to live in and Tony Alva hanging out & being very cool & radical. By the late 70's skating had all but gone from the UK. Skate City was bashed down and only one or two of the newer parks around the country remained. I still have my board (Z-Flex, Trakkers & Alva conicals) and often dream of those far off days.

    Cheers!Andy

    I'm presently back in school, working on my BS in computer science. I usually skate to school, so I get in a lot of daily cruising, and there is a good park about an hour away that I get to when I can. It's called Rampage, in Davenport, Ia., and it has a lot of quarter pipes, a sweet 4' mini, and a pyramid. One of the quarterpipes is really steep, almost vert at 7 feet, and its fun to hit that at speed and go for the fat (bionic, remember that term? heh heh.)

    Smith grinds... freaks out the new schoolers... "how do you get up there?" I've pretty much allowed myself to evolve as the sport progressed; I guess that's one of the reasons I still skate. I just had so much fun, I saw no reason to quit. Yeah, now I wish I had practiced more freestyle, as everybody pretty much does freestyle now. It's pretty neat to notice the old pros getting props here and there, thanks to Glen E. Friedman's book, and hearing about them haunting LA pools... Salba, Shogo Kubo (one of my faves) Jay Adams, and did you see, there are two great articles on T.A. and Jay Adams, the T.A. one is in Heckler magazine, and the Jay Adams one is in H30 magazine. Just search for them... I found yours by searching for Skateboarding, and going through many, many titles. It's great to find your site. Let me know if you would like some anecdotal articles, I would be happy to contribute.

    That T.A. article is so inspirational... He hasn't slowed down at all. Yeah, I want to get a gravity 47" board, and I want to track down a sims taperkick and a logan earth ski (remember the exotic wood series? Wow, wonder what they are worth now!) in Huntington beach, they built a museum of skateboarding... need to check that out. I wish I had a quiver...

    Seems that I have just enough money to get a new regular deck... I've learned to ollie ok, 1.5 feet-2ft max or so. Kickflips are driving me crazy... been working on them for years now.. but, I can throw the rad slides... :) and stuff. I remember when Rick Blackhart was writing a column for thrasher and someone asked him if he could get some blackhartwheels... Rick said "I wish I could get some..." Man... I went to kona in Jacksonville last summer :) last 70's park in America...built in 76!!! and still going strong!!! the guys from gravity sent me a video of their team doing 70's style ripping at kona... really hot.

    If you can, you should get there, it has some sweet bowls and a fast snake run... but, it isn't as good as the ones that got 'dozed :( Longwood Pipeline had a 25' deep snake run!!! a 12' diameter pipe, another curved run, and the best part was a pool bowl, a 12' high, not vert but pretty steep, but fast bowl. Plenty of kinks here and there, just enough to make the non-locals slam ;) but we hipped the cool guys visiting from cali with the knowledge...What do you think of modern skating? Actually, I see many signs of 70's flowing coming back, partially from realization of the sports true vibe, and also due to rebound from snowboarding's incorporation of skate style. also surfing... Danny Way is pulling kickflips on a surfboard now..? Crazy. I like the guys at World/Plan B/Blind/Menace/101.

    I've met alot of them, they're cool, no vibing at demos, just good guys. Rick Howard is one of my favorite skaters (Girl skates)... I talked to him for a while at a demo... the guy definitely has the love for the sport... We need more of that. Oh!!! check out the Real video, I think it really captures the art of skating... and also 5 summer stories, this surfmovie from 1977, has a 15 minute sequence of great skating (mt. baldy, pools, ditches and such). What else... Well, if you can find any duplicate back issues, I would love to make a deal for them.

    We should see if Surfer could make a Retrospective (Hard Cover :) ) issue of the best from Skateboarder magazine... pictures, articles, Mellow Cat :), gossip (my favorite. I don't think I've missed a gossip column since '75) etc. I heard there was one in the works a few years ago, but I don't know what happened to it. 'd love to get a company started someday, put back into the sport that has brought me so much joy...

    Well, keep on skatin', bro...
    later, Kevin

    I just read your history on the net (DansWorld) and found it very interesting. Like you, I learned to skate in 1976 (although I'm a couple years older than you are). My first board was made of plywood and a roller skate that was cut in half and had wooden wheels. Also like you, I progressed up the skate ladder, moving to a cheap plastic (although store-bought) skateboard with urethane wheels, to a couple Hobie boards (the Hustler and the Competition), and finally to my dream board: a Stacey Peralta (sp?) G&S with ACS trucks and OJ Juice wheels.

    Boy, could I maneuver that G&S. And I did for quite a few years. Recently, though (about three months ago), my car was stolen. The police recovered it fairly quickly, and at first glance it seemed intact. I immediately opened the trunk to see if my board was still there. It wasn't. My car was filled with all kinds of stuff, and yet my G&S was the only thing missing from my car.

    There's a sad ending to this story: I can't find a replacement. The only kind of skateboards I see in stores are about four feet long and have tiny wheels that are a foot apart. How can the youngins' have fun on such slow-turning behemoths? (I'm sure I'm missing something -- I s'pose I could give one a try. Is this the sort of board you use now?)

    Anyway, write back if you wish. And if you know of a way I could get my hands on one of those 70's classics, please send me a note.

    Rick

    There are a few old geezers out here who remember skateboarding in the 60's. My teenage daughter, an avid skateboarder who does ollies and aerials with her board believes the sport came into existence in California. Well, there I had to differ because I remember skateboarding on Oahu, Hawaii the day President Kennedy was killed, the radio was on reporting it while I was attaching a board to a pair of roller skate wheels. Yes, it was kind of crude but we rolled down the hills at high speeds with the wheels nailed onto a small plank and made the best of what we had.

    There were no fancy graphic decks with high-dollar wheels and trucks then, the island kids knew how to make a skateboard before the California dudes. I learned how to make a skateboard from a little Filipino boy who could also make woven baskets from palm fronds. The ingenuity of children back in those days was marvelous. Nowadays, its "Mom, I need $140 for a new skateboard, my deck is all chipped up and the wheels and trucks are shot."

    A. Wood

    My name is Matthew Mento and although I was born in 1972, 70's skating isvery interesting to me. I collect old skateboards and I work for an action-sports-extreme-leisure magazine on the web called charged. I think you'll probably like the story I just did on fibreflexes. Check it out.

    Matt

    I was born in 62 and had a gordon & smith fiberflex board, with bennett rucks and orange road rider wheels, I think the peak of my kateboarding years was ~1975. I also made a custom (off road) boardout f oak with that sticky grip tape on top and a custom tail. I used extra wide bennett trucks and 3 inch road riders. It was used in our hilly woods of western PA (Oil City).

    In Oil City we live in the mountains and respect was gained by how steep of a hill you could desend in a handstand with out getting killed. We also traveled from various parts of town by bumper surfing (grabbing bumpers of cars).

    I am now 35 and have a little boy. I got on a skateboard the other day and was astonished that I had lost all of my skill - completely. I just thought I would send you a little note to share some similar life experiences that I know you can relate to. Keep up the good work!

    M. Sopher

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