Cool thread.
I was a lil grom in 1996 when i got my first board. It was a variflex deck with a dragon. This kid marky who was in a group home gave it to his cousin derek who gave it to me.
Skateshops were hard to come by where i was at until these older dudes who no one ever saw skate opened one called the Laboratory. That place was sick, selling everything you could wish for, from punk records, hip hop mix tapes, caps, clothes, skate shit. Everything us kids had no idea existed. Those dudes also turned out to be moving serious weight through the area and as time went on the shop go weirder and less about skating. Still, it shaped a part of my skate brain.
There weren’t many people skating and there was always some legendary older dude that might pop up once in a while, but like others have said, when someone was skating or wearing skate shoes, y’all were instant homies. Didn’t matter if you was hesh or if you was fresh. I mean, you might get capped on hard for your style but we were all down for each other and skating. This was especially prevalent when the bikers and jocks decided to come around.
I used to wear brown dickies and vans pretty much every day and i cant tell you how many times jocks said something to the effect of “nice tight pants, faggot,” or “nice clown shoes, faggot,” and much like Jello Biafra notes, and they showered me with some water… beer… or soda. It sucked when you were alone because all you could do was take it or fight a group of dudes. I got into it with a kid at school once and half the baseball team showed up at my parents house one saturday night with bats and vodka. Kid knocked on the door and asked to talk with me. My old man came outside with a piece of rebar in each hand and asked who wanted to go first. But that happened because i was a “skater” or “freak.”
The cops were bad too. Getting sat down on the curb while they went back to the car for 30 or 60 minutes was pretty normal. I remember eating hotdogs with ketchup and mustard one day and then getting stopped. I was probably 14 or 15, and the cop grabs my hands and sez “you do graffiti dont you? Wheres the paint cans?” And im like “sir, I just ate 3 hotdogs… its condiments on my hands.”
At least where i was from, and i’m real lucky that my family is intact, all the kids who skated came from pretty gnarly home scenes and their parents didnt give a fuck where and what they did. I think my parents, no matter the mistakes they sometimes made, but their actively caring about who i was with and what i was doing, is a huge component of why I am alive and thriving at 38. Skating wasnt my only resiliency factor. I guess what I am getting at is that, at least where i was at, all the cats who skated got into either or both heavy drug use and a real criminal element. Skating was all part of that in some ways.
I might catch some flak on this, but as fucked up as it was/is, aspects of KIDS, really spoke to a lot of us.
Its all salad days, right? Being and feeling out of step with the world?
First world problem from the memories of a white hippy punk who is old and in the grey, but being a skater was hard as fuck when you were not with your friends!!! Ha ha ha then for a while i was a white guy with dreads and a skateboard. Hahaha
Anyways, the thing that hasn’t changed is how awesome it is to ride a skateboard. Nothing else spans generations like skating and I think thats gonna be the case well into the future.
Grt outta the skate jails and play in the street. Its betta for ya
Topic: Nostalgia - The Early Days of Skateboarding (Read 1644 times)