Surf Ohio and Cow Skates
Whenever Jyme (Jymie?) George used to come in to travel with the Surf Ohio crew, he always had stacks of stickers and t-shirts to give away, printed by the guys at Graphics Lab, who were just starting out at the time. Jyme let me enter the first big amateur contest in Dayton even though I didn’t have a sponsor, under the condition that I had better not embarrass him. I actually made the first cut, but I basically blew my wad and didn’t have anything else left to show. Lacking any reserves in my bag of tricks, I decided to repeat my first run on a plastic toy skateboard. Needless to say, I didn’t advance again. I must have accumulated 5-10 different Surf Ohio shirts in a few short years. Instead of hoarding them all, I only hoarded half of them, and gave the rest away to a bunch of friends.
Some people are pack rats, thankfully. I ran through my stash of Surf Ohio shirts over the years, cutting the sleeves off some, wearing them out pretty thin, losing one or two to the odd girlfriend now and then, and they’d have to be odd to date me… Eventually I had none. When I moved to Portland I ended up buying a house that was coincidentally about four blocks away from a college friend and roommate who I had given a Surf Oho shirt to at one time. A couple of months ago he decided to clean out the depths of his closets, and asked me if I wanted this shirt, which is 20 years old and still in great shape, if not a little musty smelling. No matter, it’s mine now!
Jyme was a real scenester in the Midwest skate world in the 80’s, and I mean that in a positive way. He had the Surf Ohio skate shop, Cow Skates distributor, and he was responsible for bringing a pro streetstyle contest to the Midwest (Dayton, Ohio of all places) for the first time. The first year was a pro demo and am contest. Subsequent events were pro contests. One of the members of the Surf Ohio entourage was none other than Rob Dyrdek, who was known as Minishred at the time. He was something like 12 years old at the time. I can’t help but think that the skate scene in Ohio and maybe even outside the Midwest would not be the same today without his influence. Sadly, I heard a rumor that he passed away in a motorcycle accident some time ago.
Surf Ohio – sticker gallery.
Cow Skates – sticker gallery
Rich from EPM has a feature from one of the Surf Ohio contests. He’s also embedded some NSI video of one of the contests. If you know what I looked like, you can see me dorking around with my camera in the background. We were both there at the time, but didn’t become friends until we met as expatriated midwesterners in Portland.
“when fun is outlawed, only outlaws will have fun”
i wore that surf ohio shirt til it was shredded
you never gave me a shirt. Bastard. I do still have a boat load of the stickers though.
didn’t Dyrdek come up to us and try to tell us that the SMA Fast eddie model was supposed to be his pro model? He was seriously like 12 at the time. Maybe that was the 87 contest, not the 88. 87 was cool, the 88 pro contest blew chunks.
I vaguely remember that, but I think it was someone else. Actually, it might be in one of our old print issues.
Here you go B.
yes!
Poweredge: “Are you going to go to the Surf Ohio thing coming up?”
Natas: “Yeah”
O: “Is it NSA?”
Natas: “Some shop. They charge nine dollars for a kid to get in so he can watch.”
LINK HERE
Somehow I ended up with the Surf Ohio banner in my attic…
“somehow”
somehow its like black vinyl…somehow
I talked to Natas at the SurfOhio thing. He was totally cool and very gracious. We talked about the “natas rails” that dogtown put out for awhile. He couldn’t have been nicer.
Nice blog page… Just downloaded the Ohio Skateout video to my Ipod. That was a great day… Too bad they didn’t release a video for Heartland Vert. Finals.
Now I have to go dig out my sticker box and see if I have any of the Stickers your missing!
i went to school with jams george at beavercreek and i have one of the most badass dog town sticks with the g&s rails and a original grip tape highlighting the og surf ohio skates logo. gullwings vision and trackers. im so old but i remember when they had just a few boards up just after they opened. bill danforth air rules. out
[…] If you’re a long time reader you’ll also know I’ve got an affinity for all things Surf Ohio/Cow Skates. Assault Skateboards just released a board for Ohioan Mark Heintzman that is more or […]
Just came across this after finding an old box of tees we printed in the mid 80’s. Several being Cow Skates, Surf Ohio and event shirts from all of Jyme’s contest. Check out our fb page for tons of pics of old stuff from that era and scene that we printed. LINK
Check out this link. We still have the OG folder for the Surf Ohio and Cow Skates account.
LINK
I know this post is old, but came across this site just now after reminiscing about the pro events in Dayton back in the day. I was from Lima, OH, which had small, but proud sk8 scene. I remember surf ohio ans cow skates and it’s influence on the ohio scene…it was great! I also remenber a contest that was being held in Wapakoneta, OH where the some oh the surf ohio crew came and competed against our local gang. There was this street course that was set up near the river, but also near one of the local shred spots. On my run, I broke from the course and skated the local spot. One of the surf ohio guys followed my lead and also skated the local terrain. I was so mad, that on my last run, at the end I skated towards the river and jumped the railing to a 25′ drop to the river below!…It was awesome! Anyhow, it’s awesome that you have this sk8 site, and happy sk8ing!