Tag: freestyle
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Wendy Bedell
Wendy Bedell (Sprague) was a skateboarder from Hawaii, featured in the February 1978 issue of Skateboard World with a photo of her landing a kickflip at ‘A’ala Park in Honolulu by Don Bradburn. More recently, thanks to her co-worker who decided to Google search Wendy when she mentioned her skateboarding background, Wendy and I connected…
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Deirdre Devine
Deirdre “Dee Dee” Devine was a freestyle skater in the 1980s who lived in Los Angeles as well as Arizona. According to her friend, legendary street skater Anita Tessensohn, Deirdre was sponsored by Airwalk and Powell, as they were on the same team together. In the photo below from the 1987 “Camp Bones” Powell Peralta…
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Michelle Matta
Michelle Matta (Overin) of Canoga Park near Los Angeles had a flurry of activity in November 1977 when she appeared in both Skateboard World as well as a 6-page feature in Wild World of Skateboarding magazine at age 14. Michelle was a graceful Californian freestyle skater, riding for Maxwell and Pepsi, and while there’s emphasis…
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Diane (Veerman) Desiderio
Diane (Veerman) Desiderio was a competitive freestyle skateboarder who was among very few female professionals in the 1980s. She embraced the era with big hair, big earrings, and work-out gear as a whole look, and would often perform in tandem with her husband, Primo. In July of 1983, the NSA Paramount contest results in Los…
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Suzette Owens
Suzette Owens was a competitive freestyle skateboarder out of Long Beach, California in the late 1970s. I was reminded of Suzette during a recent interview with Kim Adrian, as they were good friends at the time being slightly older. While the two preferred skating different terrain, they had the common bond of knowing how to…
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Marilyn Latta
Marilyn Latta (not to be confused with Michelle Matta) was featured in a two-page interview in June 1978 for the Wild World of Skateboarding magazine. Marilyn was age 16 at the time and from Malibu, CA, dreaming of following the professional path like her heroes Ellen Berryman and Terry Brown. Richard Taylor wrote, “Marilyn has…
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Karen Trimble
Karen Trimble of San Marcos, CA was a competitive freestyle skateboarder in the mid-1980s along with her brothers John and Terry. She was mentioned in passing within Terry’s Freestyle zine called GTurn and he published a photo of her practising kickflips in the November 1987 issue (Vol. 1 No. 2). She was featured in a…
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MaryAnne Uyemura
MaryAnne Aquino Torres Uyemura was the first female member on the Pepsi Skateboard team in the Philippines from the ages of nine to eleven in the years 1978-1980. She was living in Manila and instantly fell in love with skateboarding. MaryAnne wrote, “I have an older brother who borrowed a skateboard, and he showed me…
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Kathy Sierra
In the February 23, 2015, issue of Wired magazine, an article by Katherine Sierra (a former freestyle skater from the 1980s) appeared called, “Silicon Valley could learn a lot from skater culture. Just not how to be a meritocracy,” which was in response to a Wired article lauding skateboarding legend, Rodney Mullen. Sierra explained how…
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Debi Eldredge
Debi Eldredge (sometimes misspelled “Debbie Eldridge”) was on the Unity Skateboard team back in the mid-1970s along with her friend Andra Malczewski and Mary Zerkie. Debi and Andra were revered by Laura Thornhill, as they were the first female skaters that she rode with on Hermosa Beach, and Thornhill originally dreamed of being sponsored on…
Womxn Skateboard History 