JON 'WOOKIE' LUBBUCK - A BRIEF SK8 HISTORY

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 !

Scoured jumble sale to find a pair of roller skates I could cut in half and get my dad to nail to a plank of wood, and hey presto, my first skateboard was mine.

We used to skate behind the eastern evening news building in Norwich on a big sloped cark park doing catamarans and stuff, soon I came into possession of a supa - skuda and I was stoked and ready to take on the world.

My friend glen was lucky enough to have a dad who worked for the company that made skuda boards at guardian road in Norwich, so every week sick new stuff would be shown off and soon we were ripping the street outside our houses doing slalom on a fibreflex with gullwing trucks and fireball wheels.

An enterprising local man decided to open an indoor skatepark in an old shoe factory just outside the city centre called 'skatescene', so we at last had our own wooden playground complete with a mean 'no flat bottom' half pipe. Sadly after about a year costs got the better of the park and it closed down.

However, all was not lost, as in early '78 a concrete utopia had been built at hemsby near great Yarmouth behind the restaurant from which it gained it's name - the beachcomber skatepark. I'll never forget the first pilgramige; we saved our school bus money so we could go skate this wonderland.

The layout was a massive reservoir type area with nice mellow banks to carve all day, a small bowl and a magical blue pool with brilliant white coping and clunky tiles, we spent the summers of '78 and '79 ripping the place to shreds, got to know the owners so well that he used to let us camp there too!

We even got a visit from shugo kubo, which I sadly missed due to punk rocking my evening away in a sweaty club, somewhere.

The only other place I got to skate 'back in the day' was knebworth on a trip to see the uk subs at bowes lyon house in Stevenage. just remember the snake run being so much fun to whiz down.

Fast forward to 1982, I discovered girls, lent my beloved board - a barracuda deck with California slalom trucks and green kryps- to a friend who never returned it and that was it, I stopped skating.

Now it's 2000 I still have a passion for all things punk rock and seeing as skating was such a big part of my youth I decide to go buy myself a cheap set up and start again, after a shaky start I discover the parks at Bolton and stockport and the rest as they say is history.

Hooking up with Carl and Tim last year was the best thing skating wise that's happened since I started again, it's so good to skate with guys my own age who do for fun, cos after all that's what it's all about.

As the old skool jamz get bigger and bigger there ain't gonna be no stopping us so you groms had better be on your guard 'cos were gonna get ya!

Oh and by the way, any rumours about me being the king of the slams are purely fictional !!