Tag: Skateboard History
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Terry Lawrence
The legacy of pro skater Terry Lawrence (@silvereagletraders) and his skateboarding journey is awesome. In his own words, “My name’s Terry Lawrence. I’m 57 years-old, my pronouns are he/him/his and I’m transgender. I was a professional skater in the ‘70s and early part of the ‘80s, when I was skating, I was skating as a…
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Krishna Swenson
Krishna Swenson was a skateboarder who owned the WILD ramp at the Castillo Street House in Santa Barbara, and absolutely ripped! She appeared in the May 1990 issue of Thrasher in an article called “Keeping up with the Santa Barbarians” by John Dettman. The caption states, “Owner of the WILD ramp and dominant backyard skate…
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Robin Alaway-Lerum
Robin Alaway was a skateboarder in the mid-1970s who became sponsored by R.A.C.O., a Los Angeles skateboard company, providing demonstrations for them at hardware stores from Texas to New Mexico, before moving on to the Logan Earth Ski team, and launching a UK brand called “Skuda.” While her style channeled her background as a dancer,…
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Live and Let Ride
The first documentary film to focus solely upon the women’s skate scene was produced by Tara Cooper in 1999. Cooper’s independent production was called Live and Let Ride and was a 30-minute film that addressed many issues relating to women’s skateboarding experiences like their limited representation in mainstream skate magazines, lack of opportunities to compete…
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Calhoun Sisters
Robin and Candy Calhoun were the daughters of surf, swim, and dive legend Marge Calhoun, who was the first female world champion surfer when she won the Makaha International competition on the Hawaiian island of Oahu in 1958. Marge began surfing after having her daughters and was not your typical 1950s housewife. Photo: Sisters Robin and…
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Marie-France Gravel
Marie-France was an Indigenous skateboarder who took up skateboarding in her early thirties as a single mom in Montréal and was part of the original Skirtboarders crew. She had begun skateboarding in 1994 but had to put her life on hold to care for her daughter Arielle, who was born paralyzed and wheelchair-bound with cerebral…
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Canon “Bunny” Price
By the mid-to-late 1970s the skateboarding contest circuit in the U.S., particularly in California, was becoming well established and Canon “Bunny” Price was part of the scene. Canon explained that the nickname came about because “I was always jumping off loading docks behind the Torrance supermarkets,” and it seemed to stick as her contest results…
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Lynne Grosse
Lynne Grosse from Adelaide, Australia was given a nickname – “the underdog from Down Under” after she turned up at the Magic Mountain Masters Contest in Valencia, California in May 1976 and won the freestyle event! She had never been outside of southern Australia before being invited to the U.S. and was only 15 years…
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Saecha Clarke
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Saecha Clarke proved to be the leading female street skater, among a small but elite crew. She grew up in Huntington Beach, CA and the local High School was a destination skateboarding spot, so she would skate there with whoever was hanging out. Saecha shared in Jenkem Volume…
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Kim Cespedes
Kim Cespedes started surfing in sixth grade at Imperial Beach in San Diego and lived in Hawaii for a few years before re-locating to Northern California at the end of Junior High. In a 2018 article for Vogue magazine, she explained that “Surfing really is my first love. It’s what made me a great skateboarder”—and…
Womxn Skateboard History 