Skate or die

Skateboarding culture and graphics (especially graphics from the 80’s) are things that I still love and respect to this day.

My first memory of skateboarding: I was in art class and a mate of mine David Birtles was looking through a skateboard magazine (Thrasher). I remember only one page form that magazine. It was an advertisement for a skate shop and the entire page was covered in all the different boards they sold. The board graphics that stood out on the page, and burnt an impression in my memory were the Vision Psycho Stick (which I now have on my wall) and also the Gator board.

80’s Vert Demo at the Opera House. Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, they were my idols. Skating was everything and yeah I was into Poison (the band) too haha.

Skateboarding exploded when the US pro skateboarders toured Australia in the late 80’s. There were quite a lot of skaters around before they came, but after they came everyone jumped on the bandwagon.

Lance Mountain Future Primitive deck.

I had to have a board. I had no money and I begged my Dad to buy me one, which he did eventually. I got my first board from Surf Dive and Ski on George street in the city. There was a guy that worked there, Thrash was his name (he was rad). I picked out a Powell Peralta Lance Mountain future primitive board. It was a complete. I bought some rails and a tailbone, nose bone too and I totally killed the board using my Dad’s power drill getting the stuff on. I remember crying because I screwed up the board with the drill.

I got bitten by the bug pretty bad thanks to a group of skaters at school. Every single day I’d get home and skate in my backyard until the sun went down. It was all about learning how to ollie back then, then from there it was all about how high could you ollie (I ended up being able to ollie over 6 boards).

I soon realised that the board I had was way too big for me so I went out and bought a new “mini” deck.

Check the stupid board shape, which got destroyed in flip trick attempts. So cool though in retrospect.

Some other decks I’ve owned:

Note the melting Salvador Dali like clocks (I was into Dali’s work much later).

Chris Miller G&S.

Dad bought me this back from one of his many Hong Kong trips. On the phone he said it was a black board. I was so hoping it was going to be Tony Hawk’s last deck for Powell. A limited edition all black board with a Tony Hawk logo on it. When I got this ugly thing my heart sank (haha).

I continued to skate every day after school and in the city on the weekends. We watched Animal Chin, a legendary skate video which changed the way we skated. The Bones Brigade in the video were looking for Animal Chin, it’s a “journey is the destination” kinda message and we took that on big time. IE: Constantly skating through the city and the suburbs “chin searching” – looking for cool skate spots.

At some point the Australian public got sick to death of skateboarders. They tried to shut us down and riding a skateboard became illegal. Kids were having their boards confiscated by police. A lot of skate parks were built in an attempt to get kids to stop skating on the streets but street skating was way more fun than skating ramps (in my opinion). Despite the loud “skateboarding is not a crime” stickers we wore with pride police continued to confiscate boards and skaters (myself) disappeared.

I tried my hand at vert (ramp) skating. I got OK at it, but it just never felt the same as “Chin searching”. I gave up. I got back into skating a little bit during university, with a mate who also gave up for similar reasons in high school and during the early years of work I hooked up with Ash Bolland from Umeric who was into skating but I’ve never truly gotten back into it.

I’ve bought a couple of the new school paddle pop style boards. I’m not into them. Too thin and I hate the tiny wheels (I’ve always had massive T-Bone wheels on my boards).

My workhorses. The old Hosoi Hammerhead with T-bone wheels, Bones swiss bearings (first set I bought from my first skateboard purchase ever, still going strong!) and tracker trucks.

Over the years I’ve always bought boards though, as art. I’ve got them up on my lounge room wall (the stairs going up into the house).

I’ve heard that there are a few old school skaters, who are also creatives by day, and they’re starting a crew and hitting the parks. I want in on this action so I’ll be building up a couple of boards soon. Can’t wait :)