I started skating around 76 on a cheap plastic yellow polyprop, no griptape and wheels that rolled on a good day, but I was hooked!.....
read the full story > >Well it must have been in 1977 I first got a horrid plastic board for Christmas after months of pleading with my parents for a skateboard, seeing how it had no grip tape and not much bigger than a roller skate how I never killed myself on it with I will never know, .... but it got me into boarding so that's all that matters......
read the full story > >I guess it must have been near the end of the long, hot summer of 76 when I first became aware of the addictive, compulsive new 'craze'......
read the full story > >Norwich 1977 - My friend Glen Watts knocks on my door holding a skuda skateboard, I fall in love with a sport I turn out to be actually quite good at !.....
read the full story > >I'm sure my tales of "Ye Olde Skool" days aren't unique, but I'm gonna tell them anyway!....
read the full story > >It all started for me in late 76 my mate Jay came round with a rubber wheeled Flyer skateboard....
read the full story > >Skateboarding for me was the usual. From polyprop, to 27" Benyboard white lightning, to a proper style 31" x 10" Benjyboard John Sablosky. Living in the North we were skate starved.....
read the full story > >Today I took an extended lunch and drove over to my mum’s house. When I got there I was a bit disappointed to find her car in her drive and her bum in the armchair.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love my mum, but she wasn’t the reason for my visit in the first place. I only had about 40 minutes free and I didn’t have time for a cup of tea and a chat – I just wanted to skate in her big, empty and beautifully smooth double garage. I needed a fix and her presence was like a padlock on the medicine cabinet, it got between my drug and me.....
read the full story > >Age 43 looking for some exercise and an outdoor challenge, I like speed and balanced movement and long for the skill to ride my skateboard with style.....
read the full story > >Not been skating that long so haven't got a skate history. I used to have one made out of the split roller skates in the 70's.....
read the full story > >Started skatin in summer 1976, my m8 got a Flyer wooden board with rubber wheels, so i did the usual and cut out a board and stuck on two halves of roller skates, trouble was they were fixed and had no turning mechanism. Ping!!! i know i thought! i will put a piece of carpet between the skates and the board then it will turn, WRONG!!!!...
read the full story > >As a kid I was into all the usual kiddie pastimes - riding bikes, climbing trees, rollerskating etc... this was in the rubber wheel 'Jacko Skate' era of the mid-70's. Saw my first purpose bult (rubber-wheeled) skateboard in about 1976 and was intigued.... they werent that great, really slow for a start, but I loved the idea of flying along on a skateboard, and after seeing em in mags and on tv, I became obsessed...
read the full story > >Once upon a time (back in ye olden days) there lived a young lad 12yrs old from Tiverton who was mad on Bmx riding (me) but one day my best mate (Graeme Larsen -AKA Big G.???) turned up at my door with a plank of wood nailed to 4 trolley wheels (ok it was a Variflex but plank of wood sounded more dramatic) from that day on and for the next 5 yrs skating was the be all and end all of my life......
read the full story > >There are some dodgy looking photos to acompony this story (mostly taken in the mid slam or slammed position) and when I've finished unpacking my house I let you all laugh over them, but like Alan (see photo and story somewhere on this site) my history started mid 85ish.....
read the full story > >I started skating in 1975 in Bellevue, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. I started like so many others, on a plastic banana board with loose ball bearing wheels.....
read the full story > >Being a bit older than some of you guys, I first got into sk8ing in the summer of 77, just after I'd taken my A levels. I remember walking through Woolworths and spotting a strange, orange, plastic fish-shaped object with wheels on it. A "Skateboard".....
read the full story > >I got into skating firstly through seeing some kids tv programme about skating, it was a few old pros doing hand plants and stuff at livi, well I think it was livi, it was a long time ago,and secondly it was the Wigan comp that was on tv back in 89 that got me really hooked, seeing pete dossett skate the old vert ramp (r.i.p) stoked me out, Bill Danforth did the commentary for it, my friend met him, but sadly I did not....
read the full story > >Started skating in 1976, xmas day when my parents gave me my first board - a yellow plastic California Free Former with clear wheels - and I still have it! We had a local skate park in Clarence Road, Horsham West Sussex with no facilities, just a tarmac parking lot that we could skate on....
read the full story > >My first experience with a skateboard was around 1980 with one of that small banana boards with the hard wheels that would halt on ANY rock. I got a few bumps from those days. It wasn't really till about 1985 when my family moved to Carlsbad, CA.I started High school and became friends with this punker named Louis.....
read the full story > >I received a skateboard for Christmas 1977. Went to the local car park in the snow and off I went. I thought it was great just to be able to stand going down hill. I met Carl a little while later. I built a deck that was about 4 foot long, 2 off us could go on it....
read the full story > >AGE:- 38(nearly 39)
I acquired my 1st skateboard ,Christmas `76. I remember it well ,a Surf Flyer, with black rubber wheels, open bearings, axle connected to main truck component by a rubber block which allowed it to turn and a large metal and rubber stopper under the tail. Little did I know at the time that this would be the start of a never ending journey!!....
read the full story > >It was 1975. I was walking up a long hill(where I grew up near Swindon it is all hills)when coming down at some crazy speed was this kid on a some wheels! As he whizzed by I saw he was on a piece of wood with a wheel in each corner.....
read the full story > >I haven't been over the the UK in a long time...i toured England with a sk8r named Bradley Vine....way back in the day and we hung out and rode some indoor park with a nice half pipe in keatring or some town like that and then just freestyle demos....then to Paris for one show where they had a half pipe...i flew in from England and did one overnight one demo then back to England and i was there for like 3 weeks or so ...it was a blast....room service...prude girls....lots of tanquery and tonics and avocado and prawns....was a blast......
read the full story > >It all began in Redcar, Cleveland in 1977, not quite turned on the Punk explosion as yet, due mainly to the fact that my parents would only tolerate Country & Western in the house (they still do). I recall watching a feature on BBC's Nationwide on the latest craze sweeping the nation....
read the full story > >It must have been about 1974 or '75 because I remember where I was living, and I moved in '76. At school one day some kid had a bit of wood with roller skate wheels on it and he was sitting on the thing going down a path in the playground. I don't remmeber his name and his minutes of fame didn't even add up to fifteen, because the moment the other kids saw this, they all wanted one, and it didn't take much to make one.
read the full story > >Milford Haven, in Pembrokeshire, West Wales (next stop Ireland), has had an outdoor swimming pool since the sixties, it¹s use declining in the mid-eighties culminating in it being emptied out over winter until one year in the early nineties it just never got re-filled (but that¹s another, and somebody else¹s story)...
read the full story > >I grew up in Golborne, Lancashire, a fairly poor and nondescript coal-mining town, and saw my first skateboarders in 1975 while on holiday in Ilfracombe. Maybe they were American surfers on holiday in the UK. They were very confident, bombing down roads overlooking Ilfracombe's beach, at least one of them barefoot, hitching rides from passing cars and attracting lots of attention. I can't recall whether I'd heard of skateboarding before that day, but I instinctively knew there was no going back.....
read the full story > >I have the typical story born '67, engulfed by the skating boom of the '70s. My first board was a wooden affair, which I think had a free audio tape with it. It was a standard affair, wide and no grip, still I rode the largest hill in the area (St Neots, Cambridgeshire) at a young age. Then I upgraded/downgraded to a plastic purple board with orange wheels, which was slim and had even less grip, when the wooden board broke.! Then I cannot remember if it was the injuries that stopped me or the skating just died...
read the full story > >In 1970 when I was Ten years old, my dad, in an attempt to keep us occupied during the summer holidays, screwed one of my cousin's cast off steerable (!) roller-skates to an old bit of Mantelpiece and thus the "roller-skate board" had (to us then) been invented. I can't remember attempting to stand on it but hours of fun were had sat trundling down the hill outside my cousin's house. The seed had been planted....
read the full story > >1975 - 77
When The skateboard craze hit in the 70s, it impacted our far away town
just as it did world wide. Being the sons of a hardcore motorcycle racer,
we always had bikes and stuff to fuck around on and we, like the rest
of the kids at school, were mad for skating.....
I can't remember how old I was (about 6 I think) , or what inspired me to do it, but I had one of those toy dogs with wheels and a handle to help kids to learn to walk. I'd outgrown its previous use so I decided to borrow my dad's hacksaw and modify it. Off came the dog and I was left with a square metal frame with a fixed wheel at each corner. Plank of wood and away we go....
read the full story > >Blue plastic skateboard. I’m six years old in 1979.
Board of thick plywood that wouldn’t roll more than eight feet per push. I’m eleven years old.
Variflex with plastic wheels and no concave....
Sometime late '70s - early '80s a guy in my street shaped a bit of wood and screwed cut up roller skates on it. I had a go at wobbling down his garden path on it. I wasn't allowed one though...Twenty years later (Early 2000) having dabbled with bodyboarding/surfing for a few years while holidaying in Cornwall, I decided I wanted something to carve on in between infrequent trips to the coast.....
read the full story > >1972, south florida, saw a guy doing freestyle and thought "cool, gotta try that". Well, that became boring real quick. I prefered any kind of transition I could find as long as you could carve and turn on it. then about 1976 me and my friend mark whent to a park in hollywood called skateboard USA.Snake runs, bowls, we were stoked!.....
read the full story > >45years young ,new plymouth,newzealand.started skating back in 73.so been at it ova 30 big ones ! favourite terrain would be skatopia.was a massive skate park built in 78.2to12 foot walls!worst terrain would be glen eden bowl.skated there one night on the piss and weed !covered bruises and concussion!!bastard of a place....
read the full story > >Today was a beautiful day in the South-East and I was coming home from London after an early start-early finish day. Then I thought today IS the day and got home, packed my board and pads and headed to Oxhey skatepark, a 10 min drive. As I walked towards the park expecting it to be empty I could hear the unmistakeable sound of someone doing ollies on
a quarter pipe. I stopped in my tracks, thought about retreat and then said "Fuck it! I have as much right to be there, no matter how long it's been!"....
Right then…..
From reading the histories already posted, my foray into the dark and devious world of skating started a little later than most.
Cast your mind back to valentines day in 1985, my best mate's birthday. He turned up with a skateboard that he had got off his parents. It was one of those market stall specials - There was the tiniest amount of kick in the tail, and I think the deck actually felt convex as opposed to concave....
I am a 45 year old Wall Street Exec. I was never as good as Cab or Stacy, but good enough for Sims,Pepsi,etc to pay me ( funny I make more in day than my whole skate career, if you want to call it a career). When my son turned 6 (5 years ago) he asked if I could teach him, I broke out the Pig Board (if you have to ask you are under 30) and went down to Vans. That was it. Now I skate almost every day....
read the full story > >born in 1973, when the majority of shredders on this site were already out there injuring themselves in the pursuit of the sweet taste of skateboard adrenalin, my skate history starts a bit later in the second half of the 1980's....
(This story is an update to "the Disciples of Sketch" something I posted on my own site in Jan 2004)
read the full story > >I knew I wanted a skateboard as soon as I heard rumors about the things in the latter half of the 70's. I lived in a village called Kincardine O' Neil in the North East of Scotland. Population 200, 26 long miles from Aberdeen, no girls, but some really steep hills with hardly any cars on them....
read the full story > >I think I first hopped on a skateboard around 1984. It was a blue plastic shark looking thing with plastic (not urethane.... plastic) wheels and maybe a 2" hanger on the trucks. My friend Nadeem and I would go as fast as we could down "the big hill" I went back to that hill a few years ago and... oddly..... not that big.....
read the full story > >Well here goes my history. I was born in 71' and jumped on a board in 77'. It was this old green flexy board with small ass trucks. At first I could not stand and ride, so I used the old one knee on the board and one foot to push. This worked well for me until I hit a little thing called a ROCK.....
read the full story > >hi my names is martyn im 29years old i origanaly come for carlisle but now live in blackpool with my partner and 6year old son who is coming onto the idea of skating through me. and ive just got back on a board after 9years away.ive skated through the dark ages and the light ages(think back to the future!)
read the full story > >My name is Ken Owens,been skating since 1976. This is how it all started...
read the full story > >In 1976 when I was 10 years old, a friend of mine came gliding down the street on something magical his father had brought back from the US after a business trip...
read the full story > >Found your site last night been down memory lane for five hours now, cant believe everybody seems to be starting to skate again...
read the full story > >Circa 1970. I remember seeing two men riding wide pieces of wood, like a skim board, on the seafront pavement at Weston-Super-Mare, and had no concept of how they worked, but they sure looked like fun. I think they may have been on castors, as they had no directional control....
read the full story > >I had no problem with the ACS trucks on my first skateboard. Worked good for skating over to a friends house or pretend bowl-riding in front of my house. But one day I saw a friends super-wide Suregrip board and I knew I had missed something...
read the full story > >My very first experience of skateboarding was in the early part of 1975 at the age of thirteen. During the school holidays, a group of friends and I went to the cinema in Camberley to see the latest Hollywood blockbuster, the title of which I can't recall. Little did we know that the short film before the main feature was the one that we really wanted to see, we just did'nt know it at the time !
read the full story > >I'm 40. I wouldn't want to be any other age either.
I started on a basic skinny skateboard that had something quite plush
like velour/felt on it for grip. ha ha! Various flexi boards followed as
well as many miles travelling hazardous terrain looking for anything
concrete with half a transition. Or carpark banks. I broke my wrist and
collarbone getting death wobbles going downhill. Lucky I had a helmet on
as I apparently rolled about 20 times and blacked out briefly...
Alain Haggar and Steve Binks started skating around 1975 when Steve came back from a few years in Australia and mentioned the strange concept of riding a plank on wheels, which was all the rage over there.
read the full story > >Im sure that my story is pretty typical of most Old skaters...
read the full story > >It starts long ago in the 1940's when my dad made a skateboard, a split
skate nailed to a plank... skip to 1973-4 and dad makes me the same thing,
truth is though I used to sit on it and get speed wobble down inappropriate
hills, and then bugger me about '75-76 I became conscious. Plastic deck for
Christmas 1976, soon broke the truck, BUT the school trip to SKATE CITY in
London freaked me out
Sunday August 28th 2006 and were just home from Argos after collecting my Girlfriends 10 year old son his first skateboard. We’ve been listening to the radio in the car the station was playing The Arctic Monkeys, Similou and The Keiser Chiefs.
Rewind 26 years and I’m getting into BMX in a big way (that’s another story) playing on the radio are The Specials- Too much to young, Blondie’s- Call me and The Jams Going Underground.
read the full story > >I grew up in Halifax, West Yorkshire and started riding boards made from planks with steel wheel roller skate trucks screwed on the bottom. This was around 1976. I used to nick SkateBoarder mag from the newsagents where I had a paper route and was always amazed at the shots from the skateparks in california with the blue sky, white concrete and guys wearing shorts.
read the full story > >I was coaxed into getting back on a board again after an old skate buddy from the 70’s mailed me to catch up. Originally from Cambridge.
read the full story > >