Gary Palmer

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. We chased to the bottom to speak to him- Simon Bradley, a posh kid from my year…
He was on a SKATEBOARD, it was rubber roller skate wheels and just a piece of ply really, but for the rest of the day we were his best mate! Not too long after this I had one of these too, bought from Woolworths I think. The 'trucks' didn't really turn at all and if you hit even a fag end you were in trouble- it was brilliant.

We just rode down the hills and did 'skids'(slides) for a few more months until the end of that years good weather.
Then into 76 and the big Skateboard hype was really hitting UK and again to the rescue comes posh lad Simon Bradley- his dad had opened a skateboard shop!! Our 'spot' a row of shops with at one end a paved 15 or 20 degree bank, would regularly see Simon and his Dad turn up with 6 or so G&S, kryps, blah blah, you name it…for us to help test ride. This was heaven for us. By then I had a polyprop Skuda, but still remember the first time I rode a G&S bankrider? with red kryptonics!

The next fantastic thing that happened through good old Simon(where are you now?)was that his dad started to organise coach trips to skateparks around the country, we went to Skate City first when it had only just opened- not bad, but the atmosphere, wow! Also South Bank, Mad dog bowl, Kidderminster, Knebworth, Bournemouth, Plymouth…..absolutely fantastic times.

Even better, at the end of the 76 summer Swindon got its first (and still only) park. 'Pipeline' was an outdoors concrete 50 foot long halfpipe with a bowled out end- sounds good, well the U shape we all got used to in the 70's was more like a V shape in this one, a max of about 12 inch of tranny! And you would expect a little downhill maybe to the bowled end, no, this was slightly up hill! But I was there as much as I could- now on a V-lam deck with trackers and red kryps. Carried on skating seriously for the next 2 years until, in a similar story I saw a Lambretta cruising down my street…..and 5 or 6 years of wearing a parka and smashing up seaside towns followed- sorry about that!

Fast forward to 1992/96 me living in NZ and Australia and doing quite a lot of surfing, then Hong Kong where there ain't too much surf. One day I am walking up the small hill to my flat in HK when I see a geezer on a longboard come carving and sliding down the hill toward me…..a lightbulb went on and I was soon buying a cheap longboard too- tho' just really cruising down to the shops/pub.

Then back to Uk in 96 and forgotten again until end of 2000 when I was living in London and on a bus going past the Stockwell park and saw someone pop out of the bowl at least 4 feet!

Spent next year going to Stockwell early on Sunday mornings before anyone else, on my new 40inch Sector 9. Until finding this site buying an Alva park board, and removing large areas of skin on a regular basis………….