Category: 1970s
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Sally Patterson
Sally Patterson (Gibson) from Rochester, Minnesota, began skateboarding in 1976 and became the lone female member of the Rochester YMCA skateboard team from 1977 – 1980 out of thirteen boys. Photos: Sally in 1976 performing a daffy on the left and an elbow stand on the right. Sally’s first skateboard was handmade with the help…
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Skateboarding is for Me
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the variety of digitized 1970s skateboarding books on the Internet Archive, including Skateboarding is For Me (1978 Lerner Publications) by Lowell A. Dickmeyer with photos by Daniel E. Gross. I had briefly flipped through the book in the hour before launching my book at Antisocial Skateshop, since it’s part of Michelle…
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Jane Panagiotis
Jane Pan (short for Panagiotis) began skateboarding in 1968 and even appeared in an ad for the Watershed Skate / Surf Shop out of Rhode Island in the July 1988 issue of Thrasher (*shout out to editor, Michael Burnett for the heads up) giving a nod to the shop’s “hardcore roots.” What I love about…
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Àngels Borrell
Àngels Borrell was 13 years old in 1978 when her skateboarding story began near Barcelona, Spain. And decades later, in her forties and fifties, she continued to skate thanks to a reunion with her childhood friends. Àngels also became a key resource when a dedicated crew of skaters began a movement to unearth the very…
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Lynnette Fraas
Lynnette Fraas was a competitive freestyle skateboarder in the 1970s, sponsored by Banzai skateboards, whose name started to appear in contest results in 1976. She is from San Diego and attended Mission Bay Senior High (1978-1980). At the 2nd Annual Amateur Freestyle contest in Oceanside on July 11, 1976 there were 2000 spectators according to…
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Retro Skateboard Authors
LaVada Weir, Barbara Douglass, and Laura Torbet were three female authors from the 1970s who contributed welcoming and inclusive books about skateboarding. With my own book Girl Gangs, Zines, and Powerslides: A History of Badass Women Skateboarders just a month away from being published, I’ve been thinking about this canon of authors who were so…
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Pam Cox
I found this photo not long ago of Pam Cox skateboarding in both the Newport News Daily Press (August 22, 1978, p.3) and Culpeper Star Exponent (September 2, 1978, p.3) based out of Virigina. The photo was taken by Kenneth Silver and Pam was obviously living it up, dialed into the radio with her headset…
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Pam Kenneally
In the August 1977 issue of Skateboard World magazine, Pam Kenneally received a “New Faces” feature because she had been cast in the role of “Randi” for the upcoming movie Skateboard: The Movie (dir. George Gage, 1978), a kind of side-kick skateboarding girlfriend of Richard Van der Wyk, who played “Jason Maddox.” It was noted…
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Karen Hegmann
Today we’re celebrating Canada Day, so it’s the perfect time to acknowledge Karen Hegmann and the fantastic article she wrote for the magazine Concrete Wave (Holiday issue, vol. 7 no. 3) back in 2008, edited by Michael Brooke called “Canadian Contest Memories.” Photos: Karen Hegmann practising in her driveway in Ottawa, 1977 Karen wrote: “In…
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Rebecca Griffiths
In 1978, a maze-like concrete skatepark was opened in Chester, UK by Geoffrey Blythin called the “Inner City Truckers Skateboard Park” on Sealand Road, on the former site of the city’s Royalty Theatre. According to a news article by Ian Callister called “What would Marie Lloyd have made of kick-flips?”, there was one young girl…
Womxn Skateboard History 