Scott Starr R.I.P.

Friend of the site and undervalued hero of the skateboarding and surfboarding historical community, Scott Starr passed away some time this month. Scott put a tremendous amount of effort and his own money into collecting and preserving old skateboarding and surfing films, which included having them professionally digitized when his finances permitted. His numerous accounts on Youtube wouldn’t last long due to obscure, questionable or pointless copyright claims. The only thing that seemed to matter to him was preserving these films and TV appearances, some of them dating back to the 60’s. I used to email him fairly regularly about things I’d seen or heard about, and he was a willing fountain of knowledge. I also bought a handful of 60’s era comic books from him that featured skateboarding content, you can find many of these on S&A. Scott had some health and anxiety issues he battled with, keeping him out of the public eye and probably contributing to that fact that he is not more widely known to later generations of skateboarders. I consider him an important person in the lexicon skateboarding in popular culture. I don’t know that there is anyone else out there doing the kind of work he was, and I hope that his library is received with the proper amount of respect that it deserves. A Scott Starr memorial collection in the Smithsonian perhaps… There is a celebration of his life happening this Friday, including the appropriate paddle out.

From the Santa Barbara Independent:

The surf-skate community is giving a rousing sendoff for photographer Scott Starr, who died earlier this month at his home in Montecito. He was 61. Trained at Brooks Institute, Starr was a prolific and much-loved photographer of surfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding, and an archivist of films and television clips featuring the board sports. He also photographed and participated in freestyle Frisbee, and in 1988, won the amateur world championship with doubles partner Tom Cole.