Skateboarding started growing like crazy in the late 70's with the birth of the urethane wheel, me and my buddies were part of the wave lasting 12+ years, it was one of the reasons I loved boomboxes and Walkmans, we always had music playing. Check out these issues of Skateboarder, the colors and photos were so ahead of anything else at the time. The huge concrete skateparks turned into albatrosses for the owners as kids shifted to 1/2 pipes and pools. Tom Sims was an early hero for the sport and snowboarding, Sims and Burton both started making snowboards around the same time but when Burton put out the composite Elite 150 he blew everyone out of the market. https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator:"TransWorld+Skateboarding"
I was a bit too old for skateboarding. I did used to try and and do BMX before it had even been invented on my Raleigh 20 bicycle An article about skateboarding from about the same time. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/feb/23/skateboarding-craze-britain-teenagers-70s My memory from around that time was that the parents buying their children Skateboards were the extremely indulgent types spending £20 each for wheel. Maybe that was just the ones picked by TV news crews reporting on the latest craze.
It was a little under $100 USD for a complete board in the early 80's (a little less than a cool Walkman). At first we protected the board and trucks with plastic parts but those weren't "cool" after a few years and we then rode the boards grinding away the metal on the trucks and wood on the boards until it was time for a new one.
Van's Shoes from 1978, my buddy used to sell these, you could order in any color for the different panels, just like you see here.
20 years later, this became THE camcorder to shoot skateboarding (sorry, could not help mentioning my favorite subject, but this is a very well made video):
Nice to see you posting again CDV and it's nice one! Now I'm going to keep my eyes open but doubt I'll see one anytime soon. Stacy Peralta was involved in a lot of cool early videos including the 2nd? for Powell/Peralta, the search for Animal Chin, now free on YouTube. Powell/Peralta had the first "professional" skateboard video and we'd see clips of the equipment in the Midwest but they were really proud of the production and it was earned. They were funny and the action scenes were nicely done. I'm sure Warren Miller Movies were the template but skateboarding was still a growing sport with much less money floating around. It's cool to see how they did these videos, I know it couldn't have been easy.
Thanks, @Mister X, watching it now! It is very well made for a presumably amateur video: shot selection, proper mic placement with good sound of them skating, even shots with a moving camera. "A lot of cringe" too, as someone put in the comments I wonder what they used to shoot it. Considering occasional combing and offline editing facilities mentioned, this likely was a video camera, but I don't think they used Betacam to ride down the tube - too expensive. For VHS it looks too good, and SVHS/Hi8 were not available in 1986. Anyway, great stuff! Thanks! I don't skateboard myself. I tried several times and failed miserably.
We never had anything cool, one friend took a bunch of early snowboarding videos of us around 86 but I don't know what camera he had and he lost all of the video. I have to believe it was VHS-C? I'll have to watch this, Stacy Peralta made all of the cool early 80's skateboard videos, the first one is gold! There's videos around showing how he did it and it's pretty cool chasing these guys flying downhill. I'm trying to find a behind the scenes I've seen but they tend to disappear from YouTube.
An early juicy ad from Kryptonics (1978), yep they still make millions of wheels. Is that Battlestar Galactica? What does it all mean and check out the four-color ad, it must have been a fortune back then.
One of the first "real" snowboards from Burton in 1978. I used to sell his early boards as a very young kid with a small skateshop. When the Elite 150 came out the world changed overnight and snowboarding started it's down-hill domination. Love his boots, what are they, Herman Survivors? Shortly after everybody embraced Sorels as the goto snowboarding boot.
We love Vans but the kid has headphones on! From 1978 they were probably junk with AM radio, just before the Walkman but we wanted our music! Like I said, you used to be able to make your own colors on any panel of the shoe!
This made every Midwest Kid drool with envy, the first "professional" skateboard video. I had a VHS and Beta machine so I could copy videos, the machines wouldn't let you copy VHS to VHS but VHS to Beta didn't have that issue. We used to watch these and do our own seek out and destroy any concrete with some vertical. Lance Mountain wasn't the greatest but he was just a tad better than all of us and gave us hope. I've seen most of these guys up close, there's nothing like seeing a kid go 20' in the air and stick the landing.
