Weird/Old/Cool/Obscure/Crappy board of the month: Go Skate shop deck
November 20th, 2008 by kilwag
Go Skate used to be one of the heavies in skateboarding mailorder. They had the coolest stickers and T-shirts that said Go Skate or Go Home!. I think this shop was out of San Francisco, and they used to carry a lot of rollerskating equipment primarily. (UPDATE: WRONG! I got my brain synapses crossed with Skates on Haight.) I looked it up onlne a year or so ago and they seemed to be focusing on inline skates. Jon Sheldon found an old Go Skate shop deck that I do not remember seeing before. Actually, I probably just ignored it at the time. Anyway, it’s a piece of skate history that isn’t as glamourous as some of the more well known boards, but still interesting enough to me at least. Check out a few pics after the jump.
The grip tape job on this board seems entirely appropriate.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Go Skate was in Santa Cruz across from the Boardwalk. I forget the owners name but Bio Bob Styles was the man. If you’ve ever met Bio Bob you will remember him.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
My next deck will have that grip tape pattern. I swear.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Santa Cruz.. Right. I was confusing them with Skates on Haight. that I visited once while on a family vacation.
November 20th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Santa Cruz, San Jose, and Sacto. Dale something was the owner.
Troy, remember the “Chosen Few” team?… TG, Katen, Ffej, Meekster, Roskopp, Lopes, and Hosoi. Heavy list for a shop team.
Matt “Quimby” Oldham, the manager of the Sacto shop, was an early collector of vintage skateboards back in the 80’s. He had lots of 70’s-80’s stuff. Wonder what ever happened to him and his collection.
November 20th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
QUIMBY!! Thanks for pulling more nuggets out of the old memory cubes.
November 20th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
yep, there were several go skates. there were (i think) two in san jose, one on almaden and one on saratoga ave. we used to hang out at the saratoga one. Dale something was the owner but there was a guy that worked there name of Lenny.
Lenny was a weirdo. He basically was a guy with a mental age of about 13 so we got along great. He would get really mad at times but usually he was cool. He put us on “team Lenny” and would give us a certain color of shop stickers. He’d say, oh yeah for that trick you get a team green, or for that you get a team red, and so on.
My old friend Mark (the singer from Insolence) somehow got a job there. I was so jealous. He also got a job as bouncer at One Step. How the fuck does this guy get such great jobs?
i loved go skate. sadly it went away just a few years back. the almaden one went last, and it was the best. i think Wee Man worked there cause I saw him once.
Mem-ries!
November 20th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
i do sole grinds w/ lee pipes
November 20th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
memries indeed. i remember all the sj go skates, the one in santa cruz seemed pretty lame cuz it was across the street from the boardwalk and they were selling boards to tourists. i do remember when that lenny dude got promoted to the manager of the milpitas go skate (we were east side san jose) and we’d go hang out there and have similar stories. classic… almost on par with aaron arno and the sunnyvale sessions shop.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
yeah there was one in San Mateo as well,
November 20th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
some Go Skate dude from Sacto let me and some friends who travelled up from SoCal en route to the ‘84 Tahoe contest swim in his apartment pool and hooked us up with some local chicks…stoked
November 21st, 2008 at 9:24 am
oh davoud we loved sessions in sunnyvale…we’d take the bus there and skate that little bank set in front where the gas stations were, then off to sunnyvale town center to the wave, libby’s banks and memorex, then over to fish banks. oh what fun those days were! at sessions we met danny webster, all of the bones brigade (i think except lance), jeff kendall, and a bunch of other dudes. so rad! when will those days come back, where a trip to the skate shop was like walking into the national archives. the session had a duane peters deck on the wall, it was a shrine. i remember my mom wouldnt let me get the DK Holiday in Cambodia shirt, lol.
November 21st, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I remember going to Go Skate at Westgate Mall in Saratoga, and the one in Santa Cruz. A couple of friends had shop sponsorship for them, but we hated on ‘em, because they started to sell rollerblades, and Razor scooters. I think the guy who saw Wee Man actually saw Pancho Moler, who I used to see all the time in San Jose.
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:21 am
So it’s not a Vision board then? Or did they make the boards for the shop, Vision is printed above the ‘go skate…’ logo.
Somehow it ended up over here in London, UK. It was left in my mates old flat by the original tenants.
Doesn’t sound like i’m going to be able to retire on this one!
Interesting though, thanks.
It’s cold an crisp but the sun is shining.
November 24th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
GoSkate was pretty rad, but I patronized California Surfer because they let us lurk and hooked us up with sweet deals. Also this kooky guy Tom who used to slalom for Sims and his hot sister were always super baked. Long live Valley Joe!
November 24th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Hessian, yeah i forgot cal surf! and tom would always show us the mags and go “look at that stylish carve”. we would go when we were just starting out, and this place was pretty cool to us. we used to always grab the oval cal surf stickers off the box that said “free one each”, that place was fucking cool.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:51 am
I was a Gremic grom too even though Mike George reminded me too much of Huey Lewis. Tony Chiala and Joe Arabia used to work there and those dudes killed it. And then later we used to lurk at Winchester skates when Simon’s folks hooked up the store with a 720 game inside and some sweet jump-ramp parking lot situations.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:01 am
a short trip down memory lame:
http://www.radarcade.com/goskate2.jpg
http://www.radarcade.com/goskate3.jpg
November 25th, 2008 at 8:00 am
is that the santa cruz shop? speaking of old school, check out rob roskopp today (kooked out) at about :33!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr6c1SZYQhk
December 10th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Quimby!! That is crazy, I grew up at that Sacto Go Skate. I remember when the first Tommy Guerrero Came out and then they Quickly changed the graghics some. Quimby grabbed two old Graphics off the wall and said, ” I better take two of these for my collection”. That is what started me thinking how cool it would be to have a skateboard collection. I couldn’t believe he was collecting then, I have Pictures of the Inside of the Original Sacto Go Skate Store. I could go on but I’ll stop here.
December 11th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Oh man! Memories… Q-vvvuimmby! Last I talked to him he was manager at a chocolate factory. Lenny…crazy ass MF, but he was also a black belt in Karate.
Dale Smith owner - Cool and crazy and frustrating all rolled into one. What stories I can’t tell!
San Mateo - Santa Cruz - Milpitas - Carmichael - Sacto - Stockton - San Jose - and me (Campbell warehouse).
Valley Joe - soo cool
Joel from Sessions -
I don’t think many people know how much Go Skate influenced the market for some companies and how much help some other shop owners got in those ’slow’ days when the 80’s became the 90’s.
Steve (from) GO SKATE !!!
That deck is a bootleg, unless Quimby can tell us it was a short run. I never saw them.
Yes, Quimby definitely would have mint of 80’s stuff. We used to stash away one of everything, especially the rare colors and last prints of stickers. Sadly, I sold all my stuff at the Santa Cruz flea market in the late 90’s.