Tag: Skateboard History
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Judi Oyama
Judi Oyama’s history as both a pioneer for women skateboarders in the 1970s and for her current accomplishments in her sixties, as she continues to compete in slalom and downhill to this day, demands respect! You can listen to her story here on YouTube, launched on International Women’s Day 2023 for Santa Cruz: It all…
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Gigi Gits
Gigi Gits was a punk skateboarder in the 1980s from Richmond, Virginia who made her way to Atlanta, Georgia. In Bonnie Blouin’s game-changing article for Thrasher in April 1986 called “Sugar and Spice..?” she writes, “I’m supposed to be writing an article about girl skaters. Only problem is, in 3 years I’ve only met three……
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Peggy Turner
In The Florida Times (May 9, 1980), Peggy Turner shared that she had begun skateboarding at age 14 for fun. “It was a fad everybody seemed to be doing… Then I really started enjoying it and then I got good. Now I want to skate for a long time.” Peggy’s home skatepark was the legendary…
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Alexis Sablone
Alexis Sablone first exploded into the consciousness of skateboarding at age 15 with her part for the Coliseum skateshop video P.J. Ladd’s Wonderful Horrible Life (2002) based out of Boston. The video was creative, ground-breaking, and hugely popular, and Sablone’s one-minute-long part was an absolute gamechanger for women in skateboarding. Alexis, filmed by Dave Korden,…
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Corina GoGo Spreiter
In the 1970s and 80s, an awareness of women skateboarding outside of the U.S. was rarely acknowledged or tracked in mainstream skateboarding magazines, but Corina “GoGo” Spreiter of Switzerland was hard to miss! In a report on the skate scene in Europe, a photo of Corina practising slalom in Lake Geneva appears in the November…
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Dodie Hackemack (Johnson)
In an early issue of the National Skateboard Review (April 1976), a small blurry photo of Dodie Hackemack appears racing slalom at the 2nd annual Skateboard Championship hosted by the Recreation Department of Ventura, California. The course was created using traffic cones for approximately 80 yards. Hackemack placed first for Junior Women ahead of Kim…
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The Skate Witches
For most skateboarders today, when you hear mention of “The Skate Witches,” you might associate the reference to The Skate Witches zines by Kristin Ebeling and Shari White or the Bronx-based skate crew The Brujas, which both emerged simultaneously in 2014, or even The No Comply Coven that formed in 2018 in Johannesburg, South Africa.…
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Mary Mills
The title of an article from Textured Waves website asks, “Do you know Mary Mills? Well you should.” And it’s true! Mary Mills, as an African American surfer has been raising awareness about diversity in subcultures like surfing and skateboarding, and her Instagram byline describes herself as a “middle aged nonconformist.” The photo that triggered…
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Denise Fleming
Denise Fleming is a skateboarder who went pro back in 1976 and continues to skate! These days she has many tattoos, vibrant dyed hair, a rad style, and epitomizes true commitment to skateboarding especially considering the ordeal she went through after a random drive-by shooting incident in 2004. Denise first appeared in the Long Beach…
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Lisa Jak Wietzke
The skateboarder movie genre, with classic titles like Thrashin’ (1986) and Gleaming the Cube (1989), has tended to dismiss female roles as “the love interest” or just a sidekick or non-existent. This changed in 1990 with the release of a little-known student-made movie called Grinding to Win. It is set in West Vancouver, written and…
Womxn Skateboard History 