Tag: Skateboard History
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Mystery 80s Big Hair Skaters
I once had a poster that adorned my dorm room wall advertising an All Girl Skate Jam from 2000 with the slogan “Big Air, Not Big Hair.” It was pretty catchy, and a bit of a diss on the 1980s obsession with teasing one’s hair and blasting it with hairspray and gel to maximize the…
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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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1960s News Clippings Part 2
Every so often I do a deep-dive into newspaper clippings, which are often just average kids on the street having a good time. I have a new batch of photos and stories from the 1960s. Check out 1960s News Clippings Part 1 for the initial motherlode! Back to Top
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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…
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hoopla Skateboards
Hoopla Skateboards was launched in 2008 by Mimi Knoop and Cara-beth Burnside (with support from George & Juli Powell, and Michael Furukawa at Skate One Corporation) to provide some of the leading female and non-binary skaters with a board sponsor and opportunities, such as having a signature board, support at contests, and going pro, just…
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Concrete Surfer comics
“The Concrete Surfer” comic series from the pages of Jinty teen mag in 1978 by Pat Mills (writer) and Christine Ellingham (illustrator) was compiled and re-released thanks to the Treasury of British Comics in 2020 and it is pure gold. If you love comics and have an ounce of nostalgia for skateboarding in the 1970s,…
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Poot! and Foxy zine
In 1993, a clothing brand called Poot! was trademarked by Tod Swank of Foundation Skateboards intended for a female market thanks to a connection with Keva Marie Dine the previous year. Keva Marie would become the lead fashion designer and visionary behind Poot! and the Foxy fanzine. For PAPER magazine, Keva Marie explained that “It…
Womxn Skateboard History 