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Skateboards, BMX and Fruit Booters


Kaz Hayashi

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This one’s for @Silky Kisser and any others who want to chat about skating.

Whether you’re a lapsed skater/BMXer and want to get back in to it, whether you have fond memories of the Tony Hawks & Dave Mirra / Matt Hoffman games, or whether you’re in to in-line skating, feel free to post about it. 

........

I bloody loved going skating. Must have started around early-mid 90’s and like lots of kids had a board with a squared off tail and a soap bar. Some kids in my street played on there’s in the summer, over the couple of years they were in to the turtles, but ended up forever locked in the shed, much like their turtles figures once the next fad hit. 

I couldn't though, I bloody loved my skateboard. I used to take it everywhere, for years and years until it but the dust. It was around 1996 (I was about 12) I was given a proper skateboard by a family friend who had family in the US, so always came back with amazing shit. That’s when I started to find out about the real, propercworld of skating.

By the time Tony Hawks came out on the PS1 and the scene became pretty big, I was about 16-17 and was pretty good at skating. 

There ended up being around 6 of us in our group who properly put the effort and time in, another 2 or 3 who carried decks around, barely skated and just used them to knock joints up on. Then we ventured out of the town, and found others with similar mind frames. Our lot were more hip hop fans than anything else, where as the Spenny lads were more punk & Nu Metal, but we all guot on canny. Always going to be he case when there’s a common enemy being daft cunts in trackies wanting to cause bother with you.

We were all a canny good standard in fairness. One lad was really tall, had massive legs and could Ollie fucking huge. We used to stack our boards up horizontally and see what he could clear, 6 was his total, fucking 6... monster. By the time I’d packed it in I was nailing switch 180 flips as my show piece, however, the boss of the group was getting hardflips and 360’s for fun... Nose Manuels and kick flipping out, he was immense.

No idea if any photos exist from back then as camera phones weren’t really about, but as I shared in the getting old thread, here’s me pissing about in the back yard from only 3 years ago before knee surgery and here’s one of grandad on his 90th (as posted in the getting old thread).

 

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Weirdly, I actually started skating indirectly because of Wrestling. I won my first ever pair of skates as a runners up prize on the DJ Cat Show competition for Summerslam '92. I had 3rd place which was a pair of cheapo plastic skates, pads and Demolition Axe and Smash Hasbros.

I learned to skate in the back lanes behind our house and a few of my mates ended up getting some too down the line eventually. We just skated casually for a while on and off. Then sometime in early '95 I saw Ryan Tottle (Good dude and ever the trend setter. He has gone on to win Oscars for his work with Disney films) with some beefy looking skates sliding across a ledge in our Tesco car park and looking cool as fuck. 

His skates looked amazing. They were rugged and could take a beating. Small wheels in the middle and plastic plates to grind on. I'd never seen anything like it but I was giddy. Me and my mates went home and started removing our 3d wheels to gain enough space to grind. We failed horribly and our not fit for purpose recreational skates ripped apart on the kerbs and ledges in our small town. At this point, 'Aggressive Skating' became a thing. Early VHS releases like The Hoax and Video Groove started filtering in from the US and I lapped all that shit up. it just seemed that skating was everywhere. We'd get up at 6am on weekend to skate Tesco car park before it got busy. We'd skate the ledges and try to grind the handrails outside the council offices and Apostolic Church. 

I got my first decent pair of Skates that Christmas and had some of the best years of my life just rolling around. Even fronted a petition to have a small skatepark built in our town which was successfully built, although it was pretty terrible in the end. We would travel down to an amazing wooden indoor park called Skate Extreme in Newport. I remember the first time I saw the Halfpipe and Bowl. I remember how sweet the wooden ramps smelled. Amazing. 

The skating bubble burst a year or so later and all my mates chucked it in. I was gutted but followed suit. I'd always look back on my time skating fondly over the next 15 years but then started watching videos on YouTube a few years back and was surprised it was still a thing and that so many people like me were getting back into it. 

I'm skating once a week on average at the moment and finding the progression slow but really rewarding. Gonna stick at it as long as as my body will allow. The skating communities on Facebook and Reddit are amazing and it makes it so easy to get inspired and encouraged by what you can see others doing. 

Edited by Silky Kisser
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I've recently started skateboarding again at the age of 28. Skated throughout my teenage years (long after most other people had given up and moved on to other interests) but fell away from it in my early twenties.

Slowing getting back into it and can still do a few things. Tend to go out to the skatepark early in the morning though before there is anyone else there to laugh at me falling over. One thing I've found since starting again is that I'm far more tentative and worried about falling off and hurting myself than I ever was when I was younger.

Also started a skateboarding club at the primary school I teach at.

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2 hours ago, Silky Kisser said:

I won my first ever pair of skates as a runners up prize on the DJ Cat Show competition for Summerslam '92. I had 3rd place which was a pair of cheapo plastic skates, pads and Demolition Axe and Smash Hasbros.

That’s the best start to any post I’ve seen on here in ages. 

Good to hear you’re trying to get back in to it. I tried aggro skating for a bit, mainly because a few mates and I were big ice hockey fans so tried Street hockey. We were alright in fairness, I had a pair of Bauers and they were canny, but other than hockey, I was all about boarding.

1 hour ago, Divorced Dad said:

Slowing getting back into it and can still do a few things. Tend to go out to the skatepark early in the morning though before there is anyone else there to laugh at me falling over. One thing I've found since starting again is that I'm far more tentative and worried about falling off and hurting myself than I ever was when I was younger.

Also started a skateboarding club at the primary school I teach at.

The only reason I haven’t tried again is pure fear for my knee. It’s shit but it really puts me off.

The primary skateboard club is a bloody great idea. Good luck with that, I do fear you’ll probably fill up the accident book pretty quickly like.

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21 hours ago, Kaz Hayashi said:

 By the time Tony Hawks came out on the PS1 and the scene became pretty big, I was about 16-17 and was pretty good at skating. 

 

Can definitely relate to that - I couldn't skate to save my life but the THPS games definitely peaked my interest. An old neighbour of ours had a son who was initially obsessed with skating but then I think lost interest. When he went to Uni he left an old Toymaster board and a few other bits and pieces and the neighbour very kindly gave them to me. I could only do an ollie and I once managed to pull off a Pop-shove it after many, many falls and hours of trying and felt like the king of the world. 

I could watch videos of Rodney Mullen doing tricks on the street for hours. Bloke is just a complete magician. I would keep an eye out for all of the guys in the THPS games like Hawk, Bob Burnquist, Rune Glifberg, etc and still do on occasion. There's an interesting article that dates back to 2016 which shows you what the roster from the second game have been up to. https://tay.kinja.com/the-real-life-pros-of-tony-hawks-pro-skater-2-16-years-1771036438

I work at a sports press agency but we don't do anything related to extreme sports, which is a shame as I'd love to go and cover an x-games and the skateboarding or something of that ilk. 

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Just now, Kaz Hayashi said:

@Fatty Facesitter - a toymaster (toy shop) board or a Toy Machine skate brand board?

Sorry, Toy Machine 😂Although actually the Toymaster shop near me did actually used to sell tools, parts and boards for a time. Think that's where I got confused!

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Tony Hawks Pro skater 2 on the PS was groundbreaking. The series went to shit in the end but that game was absolutely huge and you could play it for hours even if you had no interest in actual Skateboarding. The EA Skate serious took realism to the next level a few years later and that series remains one of my most loved in all my years of gaming. I'd spend hours trying to create realistic looking lines and then use the in game camera to record my stuff. Then bang some music over the top and try to sync it all up nicely. 

A few of my pieces... 

 

It honestly broke my heart when Blackbox disbanded a few years back. Rumours of Skate 4 were rife for years, but nothing ever came of it. Then from seemingly nowhere, the 'Session' trailer dropped at E3 and skating fans rejoiced. I can't wait to get my hands on this. 

 

 

Edited by Silky Kisser
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I won't pretend to know a thing about real life skating but Tony Hawks 2 was the tits. Me and a few mates still play it as recently as a few month ago, replacing the word HORSE with dumb insults.

On lunch at work any time we see a lad dressed even remotely like a skater with glasses someone will pipe up "seen Bob Burnquist there". It's dumb but it shows the lasting power of a skating game on people who've never skated in their lives. 

I remember in the weeks my fiance was moving her stuff out of her parents, we plugged her PS1 in and played Tony Hawks 3 before she moved out.

I lost interest by the time Underground came out, it started getting too complicated for me; the same reason I never got into Skate 3, but I can appreciate the depth of it for fans.

Edited by FelatioLips
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ah man I've got so addicted to Skateboarding.  decided to take it up at age 40 having never done it as a kid.  Just got bored of standing around watching my two boys at the Skate parks on their boards and scooters.  Its been about 2 months now and I try and ride as much as possible.  I'm rubbish of course but gradually gaining confidence.  I set up a facebook page to chart progress and hopefully inspire a few other older would be riders to get on board. If anyone is interested its at www.facebook.com\tooold2skate

 

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Forgot to mention this the other day. There's a cracking little skateboard game for mobile called 'True Skate'. Quite similar to the EA Skate series in how it plays. Bags of fun and really addictive. Probably will set you back about 3 quid. Well worth it. 

 

 

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I've become obsessed with watching old videos of some of the skaters from the Tony Hawk games, including Bucky Lasek (who I think was at this year's X Games as well) and the godfather of street himself Rodney Mullen. Some of Mullen's innovations are absolutely bonkers. 

This is the unlockable video from the third THPS game - to the best of knowledge he's still doing mental stuff like this now. 

 

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