Weird/Old/Cool/Obscure/Crappy board of the month: Go Skate shop deck
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.
Posted by: on November 20th, 2008
More posts by kilwag
Categories: Back In The Day, Skate
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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.
Was Bio Bob the guy with the glasses? That was like 30 years ago…
My next deck will have that grip tape pattern. I swear.
Santa Cruz.. Right. I was confusing them with Skates on Haight. that I visited once while on a family vacation.
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.
QUIMBY!! Thanks for pulling more nuggets out of the old memory cubes.
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!
i do sole grinds w/ lee pipes
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.
yeah there was one in San Mateo as well,
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
a short trip down memory lame:
http://www.radarcade.com/goskate2.jpg
http://www.radarcade.com/goskate3.jpg
is that the santa cruz shop? speaking of old school, check out rob roskopp today (kooked out) at about :33!
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.
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.
hahaha, yeah that board was before we worked there, I seen em back in the day at the SC store
Dale Smith is the owner or was of Go Skate. Known him since 82. Met him through Kyle Wade 82. I have not seen Dale since 99. Kyle is still surfing and in to corporate America as of May 2010. Last time we spoke.
Met Matty in 83 with the Styles family. Matty, Styles and I all became very close. We became family later on…
After our divorce Matty got frustrated in life and sold the Sk8brd collection. I do know Don Hurley got some boards… The collection started when our friends started giving us and mainly “me” free boards, rails, trucks, wheels, shoes,clothes and more clothes…
Matt also test marketed http://www.kryptonics.com/
wheels. He enjoyed luging and Kryptonics sent wheels all the time. We also had friends at NHS that sent wheels,boards and stuff.
Now the picture is getting clear, right. We had a huge collection. We at one point had a room filled with so much stuff. It was referred to as the SK8 room. Now in all fairness to Kryptonics, they made the luging wheels
back in the day! I do know Bio Bob was making his own…
What people need to understand, this is a way of life for many people who were/ are in the industry. There is a 3rd generations now doing action sports and following the family business. Look at Don & Daniel… Awesome stuff!
Quimby Productions was sold to clear the record.Dale Smith helped to sponsor the business with many other clothing designers and board manufactures. It was very kind of Matt to put “Go Skate” on the video and not charge them.
Matty is doing great. I just spoke with him in July 2010, his birthday.
As far as the board in the picture above… It does look authentic, the board! The grip tape wasn’t done like that in the early 80′s. The risers look Chinese and I never saw those risers there in the stores… The wheels don’t look right for that board… I do believe NHS was making those boards.
worked with Matt at the campbell warehouse, every time he placed an order for decks he would weasle an extra one for his self, every day he left work with a dufflebag ful of skate stuff
heard Dale(“the Dad”) is building homes in and around Santa Cruz, and Bill at Bill’s Wheels bought most of his old stock when he went out of business
Just to add some closure to this article, it appears that Select Distribution is going to be reissuing the Go Skate deck, along with a lot of other Vision, SIms and Schmitt favorites. Check the huge catalog here:
http://www.selectsk8.com/CATALOG/Select2010_2011-web.pdf
My lord,this IS an industry.
Could someone please tell Vision to clearly mark their boards as ‘Re-issue’?
The ones with the old school truck holes at least!
there was the citrus heights store in sacto area too. that and skates plus in Roseville which blockhead used to be in the back.
I went to high school with Tony Smith, the son of Dale Smith. Tony built me a bad-ass Tony Lopes board at the San Mateo Go Skate store. Even though I never became a hard-core skater – I loved that board and still have it (as it is a piece of my youth – and no its not for sale). I miss Go Skate, it was part of my everyday High School life and watching Tony skate and build boards was totally cool…. miss those days…. I have no idea where Dale or Tony is now. I was sad to see that the store in Santa Cruz was sold…..
Correction – make that a Joey Lopes baord – my bad (I told you I was not a hard-core skater – LOL)…..